WHILE I applaud the efforts of Framwellgate headteacher Andy Byers to deal with racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic bullying, he is entirely wrong to say "Jeremy Corbyn tolerates anti-Semitism by allowing members and MPs who are anti-Semitic to remain within the party" (Echo, Jul 1).

He offers no evidence whatsoever to support this accusation.

Yes, there are anti-Semites within the Labour Party – with half a million members it would be miraculous if there were none – but Mr Corbyn has repeatedly expressed his determination to root them out.

The party has doubled the number of staff dedicated to dealing with allegations of anti-Semitism. It received 1,106 allegations between April 2018 and February 2019, of which 433 did not involve Labour members. 220 of the remaining 673 were rejected for lack of evidence, leaving 453 allegations to be investigated. That's 453 too many, but it amounts to 0.08 percent of the Labour membership.

Two hundred allegations came from just one MP, Margaret Hodge. Investigation showed that these related to 111 individuals, of whom only 20 were Labour members.

Many of the allegations relate to social media posts. The World Jewish Congress found that 90 per cent of anti-Semitic posts in the UK were made by "young white males with affiliations to extreme right-wing groups".

In 2017, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that Labour voters appear as "a more Jewish-friendly, or neutral, segment of the population", and that anti-Semitic attitudes on the left, including the far left, "are indistinguishable from those found in the general population" while on "the very right-wing" they are "2 to 4 times higher."

Pete Winstanley, Durham