'The flaming Polish!!!' My response to a UKIP voters reason for voting for them....

Some months ago I drafted a letter to those people locally that I believe supported me in the 1st August Thetford-West by-election. I wanted to thank them for their support and encourage them to get more involved. The letter was very well received and we have seen several people sign-up to become Labour Party members and a number of the recipients attended our annual Christmas social. One response however was not so encouraging. The person that received the letter responded with the below:

"Our family vote, and that means vote U-KIP from now on! We didn't vote for you, Terry. Voted BMP once, and UKIP twice. Also, we didnt like the fact that you went around telling non-Brits not to vote UKIP. The Conservative Party got us into this god for sacken mess, Labour in and have made the country worse, and its not getting better. People arnt stupid, will never ever give Labour my vote again, until they stop sending our money overseas. I'm living on £59.75 per week carers allowace and £41 per per income support - that's not bloody living Terry. The flameing Polish and god know what else in this country get more and they wern't flameing born here or paid into our system!"

I wasn't going to respond at all, but then increasingly I believe that this sort of warped and ignorant view needs to be challenged at every opportunity - we cannot allow the propaganda or UKIP or the right win press to hold sway. I doubt my response will change this persons mind at all, but for me, I feel it's important that I just didn't accept what had been written. My response is as follow;

Councillor Terry Jermy

190 Elm Road

Thetford, Norfolk

IP24 3HF

                                    Tuesday 17^th December 2013

Dear XXXXXXX

            Thank-you for taking the time to write to me recently outlining your concerns and explaining why you feel the need to vote UKIP. I wanted to respond to your letter as fully as I could so that I am able to address the points that you raised…

I was very disappointed to read about the change of views for both yourself and your mother. I was disappointed for two main reasons.

Firstly, I can recall spending a considerable amount of time helping both yourself and your mother with different issues that you have brought to me to address in my capacity as a Councillor for our community. I hope you would both agree that I helped you with those issues to the best of my ability and achieved as much as I could within my very limited powers as a local Councillor.

You mentioned in your letter that you voted UKIP for the past two elections. Presumably therefore you voted this way for the May 2013 County Council elections and again for the 1^st August by-election – on both occasions I was the Labour candidate and on both occasions, UKIP put forward candidates that had done absolutely nothing to earn the votes of yourself, or anybody else for that matter. They had no track record of supporting their community. During the May election, UKIP barely even bothered to deliver a leaflet promoting their candidate at all, and the one that did go to some houses was frankly scaremongering rubbish about immigration and didn’t even mention their candidate.

It always disappoints me greatly when people vote for candidates that do not earn the votes of the electorate, or when people vote for candidates for reasons not associated with the poll. For example, judging by your letter – you would be primarily concerned about national matters which is why you voted for UKIP. Immigration and benefits generally are very valid issues but they were not related to this poll, i.e. a County Council election. That said, I respect your right to vote for whomever you want and for whatever reasons – that’s democracy, but I wanted to outline my own frustrations in this regard.

The second reason that I was disappointed with your decision is that I really don’t believe that UKIP have the answers to the problems that you mentioned

UKIP do not believe in strong public services and support for ordinary people – they are even worse than the Tories in this regard.

UKIP pray on people’s fears about migrant workers and get people to believe that they are the reason that people are struggling. For example, UKIP would have people believe that the reason we have a shortage of Council housing is because they are full of undeserving migrants and the reason we cannot afford to support British citizens with appropriate levels of benefits is because too much money is being given away to undeserving migrants who “have not paid into the system”. I do not believe either of these things to be true. We have a shortage of Council housing locally because Conservative controlled Breckland Council has not invested sufficiently in Council housing for decades, and we have a national Conservative Government that has reduced funding for Council housing by a massive extent (over 50% since the 2010 general election) and they have been reducing benefits for people or cutting them entirely, e.g. they implemented the incredibly unfair ‘bedroom tax’.

There has been study after study that has shown that migrants coming to our country are far less likely to claim benefits than UK citizens. Study after study shows that migrants contribute more to our economy then they take out. I agree that our entire benefits system needs sorting out, but it is wrong to blame migrant workers in the way you described.

The Government’s own figures show that European migrants are 60% less likely to claim benefits compared to British citizens and migrants are 58% less likely to live in social housing. Inactive European nationals – i.e. those out of work and not seeking employment – cannot access income-related benefits in the UK. Contributory benefits can only be accessed if the necessary contributions and other conditions are met. Only European nationals with ‘worker status’ – in work or demonstrably seeking employment – can access in-work benefits such as housing benefit, council tax benefit and tax credits. In short, they’ve got to have paid into the ‘system’ or be paying into it, before they can take out of it.

Child benefit, child tax credit, state pension credit and employment support allowance for European nationals all depend on national insurance contributions and passing a ‘right to reside’ test, introduced by Labour in 2004.

As for the unemployed, EU law only grants access to unemployment benefits on the same basis as nationals of the country in question. So migrants coming here from European countries have the same rights and have to go through the same processes as a UK citizen wanting to apply for jobseeker’s allowance – i.e. UK citizens have to demonstrate that they have contributed to the system before they are allowed to be in receipt of benefits, and the same applies for people from other European citizens. EU citizens seeking work can claim JSA for up to six months and must undergo the same requirements as a UK jobseeker – signing a Jobcentre contract, attending interviews and so on. Unemployed EU citizens cannot claim income support, employment support allowance or the state pension credit.

Rules on who is eligible for free comprehensive NHS care are decided by the UK government, not the EU. In addition to UK citizens, others with access include overseas workers and students and citizens from countries with whom we have a reciprocal healthcare agreement. With the exception of emergency treatment by a GP or at A&E, overseas visitors are charged for all inpatient and outpatient hospital care. Immigration rules say that if someone owes more than £1,000 in NHS charges they will be refused a visa to enter the UK.

Some people have said to me about European residents coming here to claim child benefit for children in their home country, e.g. Poland. This is illegal, as the Governments own website states:

Who qualifies for Child Benefit?

To get Child Benefit you'll normally need to:

·         be physically present in the UK - together with your child

·         be 'ordinarily resident' in the UK - so your main home is here

·         have a 'right to reside' in the UK

·         be responsible for the child who's living with you

I am proud to be a member of the Labour Party because I believe that they are the party that stands for fairness and equality. For myself, I believe that there is nothing fair about people abusing a system and taking out of it before they have paid into it – that is my belief, and they would seem to be similar to what you have said. However, I also believe that there are those with genuine need that should be supported and helped, but this should be done in a fair and managed way and if migrants work and pay into a system, they should be eligible for support when they need it – they have after all earned it. There is also nothing fair about migrants getting preferential treatment for things such as housing, again – I don’t believe this to be true. In fact, one of the criteria in Breckland for council housing is that you have to demonstrate a ‘local connection’ of a minimum of three years. I.e. when you apply for housing locally, you have to explain your connection to the area over a period of time, so migrants normally score less points in this regard. I voted for this to be accepted, and argued for the level to be set at five years.

Rather than blaming migrants, shouldn’t we be looking at creating a fairer society? for example, is it fair that £22million pounds is sent abroad to British citizens in the form of ‘winter fuel payments’ which they are currently still eligible for even though they have chosen to live in France or Spain for example.

Is it fair that tax avoidance by millionaires and big businesses in the UK costs the economy £70billion pounds! Perhaps our Country should be focusing on these things?

I hope yourself and others realise it is the Labour Party that is championing improvements for ordinary people. For example, the living wage, i.e. calling for the minimum that people should be paid per hour to be £7.50 as this is the amount needed to have a reasonable quality of life. It is the Labour Party that has pledged to scrap bedroom tax and is currently campaigning to freeze energy prices, rather than allowing energy companies to get away with huge profits (£3billion in profits in 2012!).

Finally, just to answer your other specific point. During the by-election, myself and other campaigners were absolutely asking migrants not to vote for UKIP, we were asking British people the same thing. After I won the election, I was accused by UKIP of only winning because we got migrants to turn out and vote Labour, this was absolute rubbish. After the election I obtained a copy of the electoral roll that shows who voted and who did not. Those people registered to vote who are not British are recorded differently on the electoral roll so it is possible to work out how many non-British people voted.

In total, 121 non-British citizens voted on August 1^st, and even if they all voted for me – which is highly unlikely, then I would still have won because I won with 171 more votes than UKIP. That 121 figure includes for example people who have lived here for many years, people who would not normally be regarded as ‘foreigners’.

I hope my response sufficiently answers the points that you raised.

I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Best wishes,

Councillor Terry Jermy