STEPHEN Doughty MP is not the one who is being 'irresponsible' over the refugee crisis, as claimed by the Vale Tory Assembly candidate, Ross England, who should take a long hard look at his own party's track record on the causes of this crisis.

Two years ago David Cameron wanted to bomb Assad's forces, and now he wants to bomb those fighting against Assad, having already committed political assassination by remote control, without any reference to parliament, using the same pretext of self defence used for the invasion of Iraq, which he also supported, when the last thing the people of Syria need is more bombs.

Furthermore, his government unconditionally supports the totalitarian regime in Saudi Arabia that supplies us with oil in return for weapons with which the Middle East is awash.

The efforts of individual organisations, people and churches, rightly praised by our MP, is no substitute for government action but the PM has to look over his shoulder at his own backbenchers fearful of losing votes to Ukip, resulting in the impending EU referendum just when we most need to co-operate with other EU countries to deal with the refugee crisis.

This Government's complete lack of a housing policy, and a shortage of school places, due to their wasteful free schools policy in England, combined with cuts to council budgets mean that local authorities lack the finances to deal with new arrivals.

In fact we badly need more skilled workers because cuts to post 16 education means that our own school leavers lack the mathematical and technical skills needed for engineering, innovation and medicine, but immigrants are too easily made the scapegoats for the consequent difficulty British educated workers have in finding jobs that pay a real living wage so that they can both afford a home and afford to eat.

How can our PM claim that Britain is a moral country when he leads a government that takes from the poor to give to the rich?

Margaret Phelps

Raisdale Gardens

Penarth