HAVING read Bill Wiggin’s View from Westminster (Hereford Times, March 5), the challenge is to know just where to start in answering his points.

He sets out how the government is meeting the “major challenge of immigration” but omits any reference to the admission that it has failed to meet the promised cut.

And why does he apparently choose to pick a fight with the church? He says he can understand the Bishop of Hereford’s concerns over people living in poverty but is disappointed at the focus on that, rather than on what the Church can do to resist Islamic extremism.

Mr Wiggin can have little, if any, knowledge of poverty and has no right to criticise anyone who is concerned with working for a better deal for those struggling on limited incomes or dependent on food banks.

If he had more insight in this area he might appreciate that our bishops and churches are important to those people. Does he really believe that the very real problems of people in his (and every other) constituency can be set aside while bishops concentrate on challenging young British people who choose Islam?

His assertion that bishops would do do better to challenge those who “come here and are failing to integrate” is ill-judged. Many of those “failing to integrate “ are not newly arrived immigrants but have been born and brought up here, often in this kind of area where the failure of politicians to deal with problems of deprivation contributes to their feelings of disillusion.

Mr Wiggin says the church is not winning but the almost one million members of the Church of England alone are at least working to make society more fair and just, which is a more practical approach to building community cohesion than sniping from the privileged comfort of Westminster.

ROBERT CALVER Lyde