PETER Strong’s letter headed Real Causes (Review, August 21) attacking Avril Summers for her comments about a shortage of school places was so disappointing.

He made a very sensible statement: “immigration is an important issue which needs calm and rational debate.” Absolutely right.

However, he blames the Tories, which many of those wishing to shut down debate of the immigration issue seem to do and he devalued rational debate with the over-used and irrelevant emotive comment “without immigrant workers the NHS would collapse.”

Never mind the facts, let’s get on with emotive comments, eh?

So what are the facts?  I seek to introduce non-party political simple relevant rationale in this letter.

It is this: As well as shortages of school places, there are shortages of housing and sufficient resources in the NHS and other public services.

So why is this? The answer is simple. Our population growth has exceeded our resource growth. How do we restore the balance? Well there are only two ways. 

The first is to reduce the rate of population growth.

How can we do that? Well the most effective way would be to get out of the EU, thereby stopping uncontrollable immigration from the EU after which our swamped border control resources might have a decent chance of dealing with asylum seekers etc.

So why don’t we do that? Well we might if and when the people are allowed a say in the promised referendum on our continued membership of the EU.

The second, is to dramatically increase our social resources (schools, housing, NHS funding etc) to accommodate the population growth.

So why don’t we do that? The simple fact is we have no money to do it. We are in debt and we are borrowing more every day just to pay for today’s public services.

That debt is over £1.5 trillion, www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk, and getting bigger by the day.

I for one regret the massive debt burden our generation’s profligacy is likely to place upon our children and grandchildren.

So, Mr Strong, if you really want to have a “calm and rational” debate about immigration, please give up the party political blame game and the emotive comments and focus on the relevant facts.

Key among those must be the numbers and resources. All the rest are either peripheral or hot air.

– Tom Atkinson, Lydney.