It was the assumption that we were talking about illegal immigrants. The vast majority of the people coming through are asylum seekers and have good reason to be seeking asylum.
The reason I got to my feet was not really to reprimand the noble Lord, Lord Horam; it was to raise a question that came from my own experience. When it became public that we had been evacuating judges and prosecutors from Afghanistan, because they were in mortal danger, to a lily pad—a temporary location—in Greece, the number of communications I received from people and families up and down the country with additional accommodation and offering to make it available to any of those seeking refuge from persecution was extraordinary. I know that the answer will be given from the Front Bench that of course we encourage people to contact a central line and to put their names down to say that they might make such an offer, but many of those who contacted me, where I gave them that advice, told me that no one had ever contacted them. I just wonder whether the good will of the British people who could offer accommodation is really being tapped into, rather than piling people into camps such as this one.
12.30 pm
I recommend a very interesting long essay published in the Guardian earlier this week. It contained a description of what happened during the Second World War, when we ended up creating camps for Jews who had fled from Nazi Germany, again in mortal danger. They were put into camps because the tabloid press had developed a flurry, suggesting that there was a fifth column of people who might be spies in our midst—and they ended up in camps. What came out of the descriptions that they gave was the horrible thing of being questioned about your loyalty and why you were there, which affected people’s mental health. So, when the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, speaks from a particular experience in her family about the effects of this kind of thing, please let us take it to our hearts. We should have learned from the past. I strongly support these amendments.