Labour’s Lancaster Gate ward councillor Ellie Ormsby proposes the ‘sanctuary’ motion as city council leader Adam Hug listens

• CITY councillor Ellie Ormsby’s well-intentioned desire for Westminster to become a “council of sanctuary” (City seeks recognition as ‘sanctuary’, July 7) will only work if the authorities ever figure out how to distinguish between genuine refugees fleeing terror and people trampling over them by masquerading as refugees fleeing terror in order to jump the immigration queue.

Managing this needs to be compassionate without being sentimental, because both groups are as terrorised by the people traders – and in some cases each other – as they are traumatised by the horrors from which they are escaping, or pretending to escape, and under severe threats from the smugglers that they have no choice but to ditch their papers, stick to their stories, and keep quiet or lie about what is going on.

None of this is helped by the home office having whatever its latest ramshackle asylum policy amounts to spiked by an unholy alliance of civil servants sabotaging it and multi-million pound migrant services companies bribing the Tories to keep the gravy train of applicants flowing.

MARTIN KENNEDY
Brewer Street, W1