Human beings are human beings. I intend to ensure my country treats everyone as such

Bigger now than before the break, with a legal ruling in England which cast doubt on the future of asylum hotels and added to Nigel Farage’s ramping up of the rhetoric to push his party’s case. The Home Office successfully challenged the ruling, but there had already been protests and the espousal of anti-immigration rhetoric which made my blood run cold.

Build camps, treat people fleeing persecution and poverty like criminals, pay regimes like the Taliban to take back those whose only desire was to escape them and build a better, freer life for their families is what he calls for.

Nobody climbs into a flimsy overcrowded boat to endure a life-threatening journey with no life jackets for their children because it was the easy option?

Yet that is how Farage and his followers paint it in a campaign which aims to undermine the international structure of protections for Human Rights for refugees, indeed for us all, which grew out of the chaos and persecution of the Second World War.

Too many politicians seem paralysed now by the same sort of inexplicable fear that allowed that to happen.

That instead of standing up and saying: ‘Not in my time,’ they are pussyfooting around looking for a way to pacify extremists and allowing public fears to be exploited, rather than tackling the root of the problem.

There is another option on the table which the UK Government could introduce and relieve the British taxpayer of the financial burden of asylum seekers.

It could also it is claimed, empty the controversial hotels by March without making thousands homeless.

Recommended by the Refugee Council, it is both very similar to my own Liberal Democrats’ party’s policy and to a private member’s bill that I introduced early in my parliamentary career.

Basically, they would have the right to work in return for paying tax, national insurance and renting somewhere to live while their applications are decided.

This past week a radio interviewer keen to reflect the reality of the situation asked me: “Surely you must have an asylum hotel in your constituency? What do your constituents say?”.

I do have an asylum hotel and to date, during this ‘crisis’ I have had one email complaining. On the other hand, I had representation from the local community asking if I can do something to improve the conditions for the refugees.

There are those who will abuse our broken immigration system and it will be the Home Office’s job to find them and deny them residence.

We have already endured one expensive abortive attempt from the now former Conservative Government, and many of us do not want to suffer Reform’s version of the Rwanda scheme.

Those of us who want to protect those born into a less supportive society than ours will be looking to the Home Secretary and the Labour Government to offer them, and us, some hope.

It is possible for us to want the best for those arriving on our shores as much as those born here. I do not look at anyone and assume the worst of them.

Human beings are human beings. I intend to ensure my country treats everyone as such.