2025-11-05
30 分钟Today, we head to the asylum and refugee capital of the UK.
I've called a lot of politicians in my 20 years as a journalist and it's fair to say they're not always happy to hear from me.
Still,
I was pretty surprised at the response I got when I rang the leader of Crawley Borough Council in the south of England a few months ago.
This is Michael Jones, the Labour leader of the council.
It's about the latest immigration figures that have come out today from central government the quarterly figures.
I don't want to make any comment, okay.
Why not?
How come?
Crawley is a town of about 120,000 people near Gatwick Airport and according to Home Office statistics,
relative to its local population,
it has the highest number of asylum seekers and supported refugees of anywhere in the UK and they're mostly living in hotels.
For all the talk about immigration in the UK,
the complaints that migrants put unfair pressure on communities,
I just wanted to know what it looked like from Crawley.
But he clearly didn't want to talk, and he wasn't the only one.
Crawley's MP, also Labour, said no.
Thank you for the offer, Peter Lerham wrote in an email,
but there is no way of dealing with this topic with sufficient nuance to avoid it increasing levels of far-right activity.
Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at their reticence.