The list of suggested alternatives to hotels for asylum seekers (Boats, barges and big bills – the asylum options being chewed over in Whitehall, 29 March) omits the most blindingly obvious one: process their claims immediately and let them start work, become independent and pay their taxes.
In 2018, medical students and junior doctors at the University of Nottingham initiated the Phoenix Project, a charity that supports displaced doctors’ qualification to practise medicine in the UK, predominantly through English-language teaching sessions. It now operates in Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham. So far, three doctors have passed the exams required for their registration with the General Medical Council.
I teach asylum seekers English, and my class has included doctors, nurses, lawyers, builders, teachers, engineers, artists, HGV drivers, farmers, a butcher and many more with skills that are needed in the UK. Yet they are forbidden to work and left to languish for months or years in hotels, with deteriorating mental health, and living on an insulting pittance that is much less than they could earn.
Anne Johns
Derby
