The whole purpose of parliamentary select committees was supposed to be to help inform policy-making. Instead, they have sunk to becoming rather vulgar kangaroo courts used by wannabe barristers of the backbenchers to boost their egos. It took about five minutes at today’s session of the Commons Home Affairs Committee to establish that neither G4S nor Jomast (the landlord which provides properties in Middlesbrough for the housing of asylum-seekers) have a policy of deliberately painting front doors red in order to help identify the occupants as asylum-seekers. Only 59 per cent of properties in the town occupied by asylum-seekers are red, it turns out. Moreover, the doors have been painted red for 20 years – long before they were used to house asylum-seekers.
https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/no-deliberate-decision-to-paint-doors-red-says-director-of-jomast
That didn’t stop MPs, between playing with their smartphones, from spending another hour and a half subjecting two men from G4S and Stuart Monk, the owner of Jomast, to a hostile and pointless inquisition.
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