We are ending our coverage of the home affairs committee hearing on the role Christianity plays in UK asylum applications.

The live page team was: Barbara Tasch, Krystyna Gajda, Lipika Pelham, Ece Goksedef, Sara Monetta, Ali Abbas Ahmadi, Sophie Abdulla and Paul Gribben.

Earlier at the Home Affairs Committee hearing, the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend Guli Francis-Dehqani, told MPs she does not believe there is evidence to suggest Church of England baptisms are being used to help people gain asylum.

Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani told Conservative MP Marco Longhi that was not her experience.

The bishop was being asked about claims made that the Church was being used as a "conveyor belt" to aid asylum applications.

Watch the exchange here.

Sara Monetta
At Westminster Hall

At today’s hearing we heard a lot about conversions to Christianity and how some people might base their asylum claim on such a move.

That is because Christians are still widely discriminated against in some countries where they are a minority. In a 2018 study by the Pew Research Centre, Christians were found to be the most harassed group, followed by members of the Muslim and Jewish faiths.

And in its latest report, the group Open Doors UK - which monitors the targeting and persecution of Christians - estimated that more than 365 million people are persecuted worldwide.

North Korea, Somalia and Libya are the top three countries that Open Doors UK ranks as extremely dangerous for Christians. But it says the situation has been getting worse elsewhere - in places like China and Iran, for example.

Today, we heard witnesses talk about Iranian refugees converting either in their country of origin or once they come here to the UK. Experts say the Iranian church has been growing exponentially, although there are no official statistics.

If you're just joining us, or need a recap, we've been covering a one-off committee hearing at Parliament this morning looking at the process of asylum seekers converting to Christianity.

One of the speakers, a former Church of England vicar, has previously claimed the Church of England is being used as a "conveyor belt" to help asylum seekers remain in the UK - something the Church denies. The cleric, Rev Matthew Firth, was among those speaking at today's hearing, which comes in the wake of the Clapham attack. It has emerged the man suspected of throwing alkali at his ex-partner and her two children was granted asylum after converting from Islam.

Here's a look back at what we heard during the hearing:

• Rev Matthew Firth, who was previously a priest in Darlington, said he saw a "pattern" of asylum seekers trying to get baptised after their applications had been rejected - and that he had "pressed a pause button” when he noticed they stopped attending Church afterwards
• Rev Firth said “I think some of them are in very difficult situations and they are seeing baptism as a ticket to something"
• But the Right Reverend Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford, pushed back against claims and said “the figures don't quite add up to me"
• She added that given the "increasingly hostile environment for asylum seekers... it is not surprising" that they may be drawn to the "warm welcome" the Church offers
• Asked about whether there was guidance on how to approach baptism requests from asylum seekers, Reverend Canon Thomas from the Catholic Church answered: “No, there is not”
• Tom Pursglove, Home Office minister, said “We do not have evidence of systemic abuse of the asylum process”
• Pursglove also said Christian conversion was "not a determinative factor" in the decision-making process

Earlier the committee heard evidence from a priest who spoke about a "dynamic" of some asylum seekers seeking baptism as a way of staying in the UK.

Rev Matthew Firth told the Home Affairs Committee this morning that he believed some people saw baptism as a "ticket to something" during their appeal to remain in Britain.

Sara Monetta
Reporting from the Home Office Committee hearing

During today's hearing, Reverend Steve Tinning, from the Baptist Union, raised concerns that some churches who work with asylum seekers have been targeted following the controversy over asylum seekers' conversions.

It is certainly an issue raised in the past few weeks by many other members of the clergy and even refugees who came to the UK years ago and converted to Christianity.

The representatives of the three church denominations attending today's hearing - the Church of England, the Catholic Church for England and Wales, and the Baptist Union of Great Britain - spoke warmly about how their mission is to welcome people in need and how they will not change their attitudes despite recent heated rhetoric

Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis have been outspoken on this issue, with Justin Welby also criticising the UK government's Rwanda plan.

The Church of England announced it is reviewing its guidelines for clergy dealing with asylum seekers.

During the morning, the Bishop of Chelmsford would not be drawn into giving specifics on what changes will be made, but she was adamant that, while some of the language will be tweaked, the underlying message will not change.

Just before the hearing finished, Tom Pursglove was pressed about officials weighing up faith conversion claims and the threat of persecution of asylum seeker applicants.

“What we are dealing with in terms of this hearing today, it strikes me is a subset of a subset,” he says.

Pursglove explains that from the sampling officials did ahead of today's committee hearing to provide greater clarity around the facts, this has not appeared as a recurring issue.

“What we are seeing is that the vast majority of individuals where Christian conversion is a factor are saying that they have converted at that initial reporting stage,” he adds.

George Shirley, the Home Office director of asylum and human rights operation, is asked how the department trains its officials to discern whether an asylum seeker has genuinely converted to Christianity.

He says any claims, such as a letter from a church, are thoroughly scrutinised. A letter is "not determinative" in granting asylum, he says.

The decision maker would look into the background of the church, and then investigate details of the conversion - how it occurred, what were the circumstances around it, and when it happened - before deciding whether it is credible or not.

Image source, UK Parliament

Tim Loughton MP is now up and is asking the Home Office representatives at the committee hearing how decision makers - faced with facts which may include religious conversion - can reject asylum claims, only for them to be overturned on the same evidence that's been presented to a tribunal system.

Where is it going wrong, he asks.

Is it the Home Office system that is faulty, or is there something with the tribunal system - that they are "a softer touch," he asks.

Tom Pursglove says Christian conversion is "not a determinative factor" in the decision-making process, and that this "is weighed within the decision making, with credibility associated to that - testing of credibility amongst a range of other factors, relevant to each individual case".

Longhi is now pressing Pursglove about asylum seekers who committed crimes or are suspects of carrying out crimes after converting to Christianity.

“An asylum seeker who claimed Christianity and then went to Liverpool hospital to blow the place, and then the [Abdul Shokoor] Ezedi case as well, are you not alarmed at these cases?” he asks.

The minister of state says it is for the judiciary to make decisions on these cases, adding that he has only limited things to say when there is an ongoing police investigation.

“I am confident the Home Office did its job in relation to that latter case.”

Tory MP Marco Longhi is now asking the minister of state about the figures around asylum appeals, saying a common response to this query is that there isn't any data.

How, he asks, does the government know if the asylum system is working if we don't keep any data after a decision is approved?

Tory MP Tom Pursglove replies to this question by saying the Home Office is "actively working" to improve its data collection methods, adding that officials can record asylum claims "in an itemised way" along with the reasons why applications were granted.

This is "ongoing work", he says, and both he and the home secretary have made it clear to officers that they want to get "greater itemised data" around decisions.

SNP MP Alison Thewliss kicks off this part of the committee hearing by asking Tom Pursglove what kind of evidence the Home Office has that allowed former Home Secretary Suella Braverman to write in the Daily Telegraph that “too many churches are facilitating bogus asylum claims”.

The minister says that it is for Braverman to explain those remarks.

“We do not have evidence of 'systemic abuse' of the asylum process,” he says, adding that reforms are making the assessment process more robust.

Pursglove says he recognises that "recent cases have lead to interest in this issue" but that they do not have specific evidence of facilitation - when concerns are raised, they are thoroughly investigated.

We are now hearing from three representatives of the Home Office:

• Tom Pursglove, minister of state for legal migration and the border
• Dan Hobbs, director general for migration and borders group
• and George Shirley, director of asylum and human rights operations

Image source, UK Parliament

Rev Canon Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, is asked by the SNP's Alison Thewliss if people who have converted continue staying and participate in the life of the Church.

"It would be incumbent on every priest to have an interview, a formal interview in many respects, with the person who is seeking baptism," he explains.

The background of the person before they receive the sacraments has to be ascertained, he says, citing marriage as another example.

"In that process you would unpack their position, of where they've come from, if they were asylum seekers, for instance."

"There is a sense of real engagement."

"To say everyone who receives baptism as an adult and then continues on in the church, you can’t say whether that will happen... we are all human and people will have difference experiences of faith," he says.

Image source, Parliament TV

Marco Longhi is still up and is now accusing the Church of England bishop of taking contradictory positions about Rev Firth's testimony from earlier, saying that she is effectively saying he is not telling the truth.

"I have never called him a liar," she says.

"If he is claiming that the Church of England is being a 'conveyor belt' for baptisms in order for people to gain asylum status, that is not the experience that I have - and I don't believe there is the evidence to suggest it."

Tory MP Marco Longhi is now pressing church leaders about how it could get to the stage where a clergy member would vouch for the Christian faith of people who then go to commit crimes.

“The Church is not infallible. We are a human institution, errors may be made,” Dr Francis-Dehqani says.

She notes that policy decisions within the Church, however, should not be formed "on the basis of a couple of negative cases".

Sara Monetta
Reporting from the Home Affairs Committee hearing

When Reverend Firth wrote in the Telegraph of a “conveyor belt” of baptisms for asylum seekers last month, his voice was a quite isolated one.

At the time, I spoke with many priests and organisations who work with asylum seekers. They stressed they approached the issue of conversions carefully and they were able to discern if someone had ulterior motives to seek a baptism.

It’s a process the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, spoke about at today’s Home Affairs Committee hearing.

Unlike the Catholic Church, that has a very structured and long preparation process leading to baptism for new converts, the Church of England doesn’t have a central policy in place. Usually, people are required to attend preparation courses that last between 10 and 12 weeks.

But the Bishop of Chelmsford, who’s been strongly questioned during the hearing, has stressed that members of the clergy are very careful and honest in their assessments.

“How do you assess what is in someone’s heart? We use the language of discernment,” she said.

She said she is aware of members of the clergy who denied baptism to asylum seekers when they weren’t convinced of their genuine conversion.

She also noted that the number of baptisms in the Church of England have been declining over the years.

Lee Anderson MP is back up and is asking the Bishop of Chelmsford whether she agrees with Rev Firth, who earlier said that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was turning a blind eye to the issue of asylum seekers.

“We don’t operate that kind of system in the Church of England, the archbishop does not act as a CEO,” Dr Francis-Dehqani says.

She explains that every diocese is led by its bishop together with a leadership team and that clergies have a certain level of autonomy.

Image source, UK Parliament

Tim Loughton is now challenging the Bishop of Chelmsford about clergy being given an "instruction manual" on how to get somebody through the asylum process.

He reads out a section from the guidelines about attending court: "Judges are likely to react negatively if there's anything that looks like an organised demonstration, so avoid there being too many people present. You need to give convincing evidence."

Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani responds by saying it is not an instruction manual, but rather guidelines intended to help clergy understand how best to support somebody.

"I think, around this whole area, there is an awful lot of rhetoric and negativity of language," she says.

"Headlines are driving people’s perception and that is not helpful."

The representatives of the three Churches before the home affairs committee are asked if there is a central guidance to clergy about baptism for asylum seekers.

Speaking for the Catholic Church, Rev Canon Thomas answers: “No, there is not.”

The Reverend Steve Tinning says the Baptist faith has a collection of various guidance but “there is nothing just for asylum seekers".

Within the Church of England, Rt Rev Francis-Dehqani says existing guidelines ought to be examined from time to time.

“I don’t think the underlying essence of it will change; which is that our role is to offer a warm and a loving welcome to provide support where we can,” she adds.