• CONGRATULATIONS to the New Journal for exposing the shocking treatment of asylum seekers in a Home Office “house of horrors” in Kilburn (Asylum Hell in a House of Horrors, August 17).

I have been hosting a refugee via Refugees at Home (www.refugeesathome.org) and he has told me of similar conditions at a Home Office hostel in another borough.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be forced to leave one’s home often at gunpoint and with few possessions and it is piling misery upon misery to place people seeking refuge in such appalling conditions.

I am reminded of the words of the late Tony Benn, who said: “The way a government treats its refugees shows how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.”

CLLR RICHARD COTTON
Labour, Camden Town with Primrose Hill ward