Presenter Alex Forsyth: Yasmin Alibhai Brown, these hotels seem to have become a real focal point for some people, and we have seen protest, but also counter-protest, outside some of this accommodation.

YA-B: Yes, but I want to go to the question because I think it’s a really important question. We have reduced all kinds of human beings who we’ve labelled in this way into numbers, into criminals, into rapists, as if they are all, or they had one man and perhaps many more criminals amongst them [editor’s note – this is a correct transcription but her meaning is obscure]. But the very thought that a whole groups [sic] of people can be demonised and dehumanised also dehumanises us. Our country [gales of applause] and I am about to cry because I watch the language. I come from Uganda.

When people tell me, “Oh it’s, this is the worst it’s ever been, we were always so welcoming.” No you were NOT! When I came from Uganda there were people turning up at airports telling us to – I’m not going to use the word, the word that they used – go back where we came from. We had been expelled by Idi Amin.

Leicester and Ealing, where I live, put in adverts into local newspapers when Idi Amin was threatening us with concentration camps, they put in, they paid for adverts saying, “don’t come here, we don’t want you”. So, I come from a very personal position. Nobody willingly leaves their home, unless they have to. [Editor’s note: according to Wikipedia, YA-B left Uganda in 1972, before Amin’s expulsion order in August of that year, apparently to take up a place at Oxford.]

And I agree. Why don’t we let them, why don’t we open up Buckingham Palace? Nobody’s using it. Let’s put them there. But let us [gales of applause], you know, Nick [Thomas-Symonds MP and Paymaster General, another member of the panel] is right on one thing. The sad thing is under Starmer the Labour Party is stepping so Right I don’t know what it stands for any more, but he is right that the deliberate not-processing of applications under the Tories was a horrendous crime against those humans. So, we have to be more humane. Put them into Buckingham Palace. [gales of applause and whoops]

AF: Jacob Rees-Mogg, it is accurate to say, isn’t it, that the previous government took an active decision not to process these people’s claims and hotel use, people in these hotels peaks, it went right through the roof under the Conservatives?  

JR-M: Well, processing their claims has meant granting them asylum, so that just means…

AF (interrupts): not always, not everybody’s, not everybody’s been granted.

JR-M: About 90%, about 90% are getting granted asylum and the ones who aren’t granted it don’t get removed ’cause they then claim human rights to stay here, so processing them merely means that they are here under a different guise. It doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean that they are removed from this country and actually what the last government did is made it illegal to come over on a small boat so that you couldn’t claim asylum. This Government’s changed that so that now you can, so this Government has removed the disincentives for coming here, and therefore the problem has got worse.

If we’re to solve this problem, if we’re serious about this problem, and it is a problem because the numbers are simply too large. We have had millions of people come into this country…

YA-B (interrupts): Millions are not coming into this country, don’t use numbers carelessly.

JR-M: Oh yes, millions have come in, legally and illegally. There are hundreds of thousands who have come in now on small boats…

AF (interrupts): So you’re, let’s just be clear about the numbers…

JR-M: The numbers are both legal and illegal.

AF (interrupts again): You’re talking about, you’re talking about both, people who’ve come here to live, work, study…

JR-M: We’ve had…

 AF: …and you’re not just talking about in one year, you’re talking about in multiple years.

JR-M: That’s right, in multiple years…

AF (continuing to interrupt, resulting in an almost incomprehensible section): There haven’t been millions in a year coming across the Channel…

JR-M: I didn’t say that, I said there…

AF: I’m clarifying, clarifying…

JR-M: …have been millions who have come, there are millions who have come, and that is simply too many for this country to absorb and it has consequences. It has consequences for the infrastructure of this nation. It has consequences for the culture of this nation. It has consequences for housebuilding in this nation and the provision of housing for people who have been here anyway. And we simply cannot carry on with these numbers and Donald Trump has shown [howls of protest from the audience at the mention of Trump] that if you, yes, Donald Trump has shown that if you are serious, if you are serious, you can solve the problem. In April, illegal migration from Mexico to the US was down by 91…

YA-B (interrupts): We’re talking about this country.

JR-M: I know, down by, down by 91%. We need to take a leaf out of his book and deport people…

YA-B (horrified): Oh God!

JR-M: …and stop people coming.

AF: Okay.

YA-B: Oh God!

JR-M: We need to, we need to secure our borders.

AF: Okay. Yasmin, briefly, briefly.

YA-B: this is the kind of, er, absolute, erm, disinformation. His tribe, Jacob, I’m sorry I don’t use the word ‘Sir’, Jacob, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his tribe, of the privileged, born under absolute privilege, never told us the truth. They invited… [editor’s note: in 2003 YA-B returned her MBE claiming a spirit of republicanism and in protest at the Labour government’s involvement in the Iraq War]

JR-M (interrupts): Everything I’ve said is true.

YA-B: They’ve invited legal immigrants. Without them we would stop. Our care homes, our hospitals, our doctors, and I think you are so insulting to me and my people when you put us into that illegal category.

JR-M: I haven’t put you into any category.

YA-B: Absolutely not doing it [gales of applause].

JR-M: I haven’t put anybody into any category. I have, I have simply said that the numbers are too big, they are more than we can cope with, we need net zero immigration until we have absorbed the people who have come. And then we can think about doing it differently [gales of applause].

AF attempts to wind the discussion up.

YA-B: 0.6, let me tell the audience, percent of the population, that’s who these people are, 0.6! [not clear what YA-B is referring to here]

AF then moves to another member of the panel, Alice Thomson, a political journalist.

Alice Thomson [starts by condemning the inflammatory language and lumping all Muslim men together as a threat to women]: On the other hand, 110,000 asylum seekers have come here in the last year, and I think we have a prison population of 88,000 and we can’t cope with that, that we have to do something. What worries me about Nick saying that, you know, we’re going to get the hotels down, where do we put them if they’re not in the hotels? They’re not all going to be processed. If you take them out of the hotels, a lot of them will go into Houses of Multiple Occupation and, and they will disappear into towns and it’ll be quite hard to absorb them there [applause breaks out] so… and you’re right, who gets these people? Often towns and cities don’t know who they are, don’t know where they are, it’s all incredibly opaque, we have to make sure that we process these people very fast, you shouldn’t have too many appeals, I think that’s very difficult too, for everyone’s sake we need to make it faster, make it more transparent, and we do need to know the numbers. But we cannot victimise, as you say, and then one group and villainise an entire group of people who we’ve welcomed here for generations [gales of applause].