It is absolutely shocking to read that unaccompanied minors are disappearing from hotels run by the Home Office and are being trafficked across the country.

According to whistle-blowers and child protection sources, children are being abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars. They say: “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers.” This is so disturbing and is the result of such a cruel, chaotic and hostile Tory asylum system. For months, councils, charities and the police warned the Government that these unaccompanied child refugees were extremely vulnerable to criminal gangs and that the hotels were not offering enough protection or safe spaces. These warnings were routinely ignored.

What’s more, whistle-blowers have now revealed that these children were threatened and subjected to racist abuse by staff at Home Office-run hotels, driving many onto the streets and into the hands of criminals.  The Government has some serious questions to answer, and I am appalled at this racist treatment of vulnerable children.

My colleague Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, has said that the Government needs to take action to tackle people trafficking gangs and ensure there are proper child protections in place. She has said: “This is extremely serious. Trafficking gangs are bringing children and vulnerable teenagers into the country for exploitation. The Home Office clearly doesn’t have a grip on this at all; for so many Albanian children to just disappear like this should have raised major alarm bells in government. They must not keep letting the gangs get away with this.” I completely agree with Yvette and we will continue to urge the Government to get a grip on this serious situation.

Last week my Labour colleague, Tulip Siddiq MP, raised this issue to the Prime Minister. She was laughed at by Tory MP Jonathan Gullis, who heckled, “Well, they shouldn’t have come here illegally”. There are no words to describe how tasteless and shameful this is – a new low for the Tory Party.

But the way our country, under several Conservative Governments, treats refugees has long been a source of national shame. The Tory hostile environment is now entrenched in all policy relating to migrants and fleeing refugees. Denying asylum seekers the right to work, demonising them for seeking sanctuary and pushing the cruel Nationality & Borders Bill through Parliament to criminalise vulnerable refugees risking their lives to reach the UK.

It is terrible, but to anyone who has been following the way this Government treats refugees it is not surprising.  This outcry must become a turning point that shines a light on the situation facing refugees, not just from Ukraine, but from Afghanistan to Syria, Yemen to Burma. Refugees fleeing unimaginable horrors deserve so much better.

Throughout my Parliamentary career, I have fought for the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. I will continue to speak out on this issue, and I am grateful for all your comments, letters and emails.