I congratulate the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Angus Brendan MacNeil)—I apologise for not trying to pronounce his constituency, but my linguistic skills are more akin to those of Del Boy. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on his speech. It takes great courage to speak truth to power and he always does it with such good grace.
I want to speak in favour of the motion. Today is World Refugee Day, and it is important to set out the issues in our history of supporting refugees following the second world war, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. In my experience, there is not a great deal of understanding about who refugees are, what their background is, why they have come, and so on, and a lot of confusion about refugees and migrants as a whole. Unfortunately, in some cases that has been exploited by some people, who have sought to portray refugees and migrants as a whole as different or “others” or tried to make people afraid of them. Who can forget Nigel Farage’s infamous poster in the 2016 EU referendum, which tried to demonise Syrian refugees who were fleeing for their lives and portray them all as terrorists?
Or who can forget the shameful front pages of too many of our tabloids in the run-up to the referendum, which tried to alienate refugees from the public, or at least their readers? King’s College London has published a report, which I recommend people read, analysing tabloid front pages. Immigration was the second most mentioned issue, with 99 front pages on immigration in the 10 weeks preceding the 2016 EU referendum, 76% of them negative. Hon. Members should please read some excerpts from the report. It is shameful and begs the question of what is happening not just to evidence-based journalism, but to ethical journalism. That is compounded by what we see on social media and the lack of regulation there.
It would be fair to say that some people have raised concerns about immigration. We will all have had issues raised with us on the doorsteps, particularly where there
are housing pressures and when other public services such as the NHS and, increasingly, education are in crisis. However, immigration is also raised in areas where there is little diversity or fewer problems with services. That says a lot about how the media have portrayed the issue and how we have failed across the political spectrum to have a debate about immigration, migrants and refugees. We need to acknowledge that and step up to the plate, because we have created a vacuum and been replaced—I am not going to give a certain person the dignity of having his name mentioned in this place, but he was the leader of one party and became the leader of another.