Thursday 6 May, 9pm

Award-winning Dispatches director David Modell, investigates how public opinion is affecting the Government's policy on asylum by travelling to Lee-on-the-Solent and revealing how this small town in the south of England reacts when threatened with an influx of asylum seekers.

The Government had wanted to use Lee as part of a pilot scheme to develop three large accommodation centres for asylum seekers. As part of the plans, Lee would receive 400 male asylum seekers who were to be housed in HMS Daedalus, a disused naval base. But they had reckoned without the fierce opposition from the local community. A feeling that is perhaps echoed in other parts of the country.

The Daedalus Action Group, or DAG has been set up to keep Lee asylum free. A key member of the committee sums up the fear that many of the campaigners feel: ‘You've got the fear of rape, you've got fear of HIV and AIDS, you've got a fear of a lot of sexually transmitted diseases. And I think if just one young girl in the area ended up with AIDS that would be very, very nasty.’ Another concerned citizen reports that ‘parents are worried about their children and their safety’.

A resident who lives near the proposed site says, ‘The majority are just here for an easy life. It's just totally the wrong place. There is no ethnic communities around here to support them. They're much better off near a larger area where they have the chance to perhaps mingle with their own kind.’ While at the more extreme end of the spectrum, one man says of asylum seekers, ‘I don't mind 'em dying - I don't care. I'll encourage it. Go on to a better world, don't drain my f****** taxes.’

But such sentiments are not held by everyone in Lee. Those on the other side of the debate hold equally strong feelings. One woman says, ‘It just makes me so angry and sick that people can be so self-centred and put themselves against people who are in need... there's a group of us that feel the way I do and there's a lot of people that are scared to speak up because one person got attached and had to be taken to hospital and one person got a brick thrown through their window... people are scared to speak up’. Another man describes Lee as ‘like entering a township where nobody else was wanted but the members of that township. It was this little island of hatred’.

Caught in the middle are people like Kayembe Mbombo - the sort of person the members of DAG want to keep out of Lee. Forced to flee Congo after escaping the clutches of the army, Kayembe left his wife and three children behind to an unknown fate while he made his way to Britain where he is not allowed to work and must live on £38.26 a week.

But such considerations hold no sway with the members of DAG, whose campaign is treated seriously enough by the Government for its leader to be granted a private audience with (then) Immigration and Asylum Minister Beverly Hughes.

Finally, the members of DAG get the news they have been hoping for - the accommodation centre plan is abandoned. Losing Daedalus is a serious blow to the government's trial of accommodation centres - once 'at the heart' of its asylum reforms. The other sites, near Nottingham and Oxford, may yet be forced through but after two years of fighting local hostility, will the government have the will to try this anywhere else?

If you’re concerned about the government’s asylum policy check out the following links which offer information and advice about the issues raised in the programme.  To discuss the issues from the programme with other viewers go the the Channel 4 news forum.

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