The Bishop of Chelmsford goes on to explain that the process of baptism varies.

"Many of them [applicants] will have been already on their journey of faith to find personal response to Christian conversion," she explains.

Dame Diana Johnson is now asking Rev Canon Thomas to explain how baptism applications are handled in the Catholic Church.

The reverend says the process generally starts in September and last about nine months. It involves a team of catechists who engage with applicants on a weekly basis before a baptism ceremony at Easter.

The same question is then put to the Bishop of Chelmsford, who says in the Church of England, the process typically takes 10 to 12 weeks.

Reverend Tinning then says that in the Baptist Church, its about half that time - about six weeks.

Image source, UK Parliament

Rev Canon Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, is now addressing the committee.

He begins by outlining the number of baptisms carried out between 2020 to 2022 for people over the age of seven.

In the Catholic Church in England and Wales, he says, there were 2,157 baptisms in 2020. For the following year, there were 2,841 and in 2022, there were 3,958 carried out for people older than seven.

These figures, he adds, are the only data that's been collated.

Sara Monetta
Reporting from the Home Office Committee hearing

At the time of the Clapham attack and the ensuing manhunt for Abul Shokoor Ezedi, the Church of England came under attack over its guidance to clergy on how to deal with asylum seekers.

That guidance was published seven years ago and is available on the Church of England’s website.

The Church and other faith institutions have outlined how clergy should engage with the Home Office when it comes to providing references for asylum seekers. It is a process in which priests are called to participate whenever an asylum claim is based on conversion.

During his testimony in today’s hearing, Reverend Matthew Firth said he found the guidance ‘quite political’.

At the beginning of her testimony, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, was asked to comment on accusations about churches facilitating baptisms to help people with their asylum claims.

“We take baptism extremely seriously and we expect our clergy to act honestly,” she said.

The Bishop of Chelmsford continues by highlighting 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.

She emphasises that asylum claims are the responsibility of the Home Office, the government courts and tribunals.

“We [Church leaders] need to play our part honestly and truthfully,” she says.

The Right Reverend Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, is now up.

She begins by pushing back against claims about a "conveyor belt" of baptism applications from asylum seekers.

"The figures don't quite add up to me," she says.

As a reminder, she is appearing at the hearing alongside Reverend Canon Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and Reverend Steve Tinning of the Baptist Union of Great Britain as representatives of church leaders in the country.

Image source, UK Parliament

We're now hearing from MP Lee Anderson, who begins his line of questioning by asking what share of asylum seekers sought a baptism during the appeal stage.

Rev Firth answers: “It was all of them."

“I think some of them are in very difficult situations and they are seeing baptism as a ticket to something whether that it’s true or not,” Rev Firth adds.

Image source, UK Parliament

Ex-Tory MP Lee Anderson, who defected this week to the Reform UK party, is among the committee members who are listening to Rev Firth's testimony this morning.

The cleric goes on to tell the committee how there are some worship centres positioning themselves to be centres of legal help and support, providing, as he says, advice for people who have had their applications refused.

There is bit of a grey area developing there, he says.

Somebody might come to church for baptism, but also to receive legal advice to help them overturn their failed asylum applications.

Rev Firth says this is perfectly legal but it doesn't tally with the Church saying "we are offering an open arms welcome", he says.

"The vast majority if not all of the people seeking asylum who were coming to me for baptism were seeking baptism after already having failed in their original asylum claim," Rev Firth continues to explain while providing his witness testimony.

“That’s a pattern that should be spotted and should be part of advice and guidance to clergy on how to discerningly deal with these situations,” he adds.

He says it would carry more weight if people had attempted to join a church as soon as they arrived to the UK, adding that this was not what he saw in the majority of cases.

Rev Firth says he ensured a rigorous process when handling baptism applications.

"We need to know where they came from - if they came from Iran or Syria, and if they were baptised there."

Rev Firth says if it was proven that applicants came from those countries, they were "really brave".

Rev Firth explains to committee members that a lot of people who came to him for baptism "had already failed in their asylum claim".

He says: "I spotted that dynamic going on and pressed pause in a reasonable way. I dealt with it personally, in a local way."

Now Rev Firth is speaking about how each individual application is assessed.

He says questions are asked about if the person is seeking to be a part of the community of the Church, to be a part of worshipping life.

“So really it’s about that person’s spirituality rather than a particular event which is called baptism”.

“In all of these, we should be looking more at a person’s rounded picture of Christian expression,” Rev Firth says.

Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, asks Rev Firth what happened when he called for a pause on baptisms and they [the applicants] "melted away".

"Where did they go?," he asks.

Rev Firth says he didn't quite say no - he made sure that those people realised they had to get involved in the life of the Church.

"People would, fairly quickly, stop coming to that morning service… they weren’t coming along to church after that," he explains.

Image source, UK Parliament

He is now asked why, if he had concerns, "wouldn’t you have reported it up the management chain at the time?”

Rev Firth replies: “For two reasons: Number one, I personally dealt with the situation.

“Number two, those disclosures were sort of ignored in my experience, there was not much confidence that I could have shared something like that and been taken very seriously."

He now talks about the number of people that were brought to him for baptisms and those that were performed.

Rev Firth says he honoured the baptisms that had been scheduled but that after he “spotted a pattern” he “pressed a pause button”.

He says he wanted to ensure the process to take the baptism applications forward was "rigorous," and “to make sure people are requested to come to church, are getting involved and attending church regularly and so on.”

“That made the numbers fall off a cliff,” Firth says, explaining that it became apparent people were not really wanting to get involved with the life of the Church.

The parish in Darlington was offering all sorts of welcome to people who were asylum seekers, says Rev Matthew Firth.

That extended to him using his own garage as a furniture distribution centre for those housed in the local area, he says.

The congregation members were very good, he says, at befriending and supporting in a pastoral sense asylum seekers, and tried to engage people in a way that drew them into the Church community.

"We have to be as welcoming as possible to people who find themselves in difficult circumstances", he says.

Image source, UK Parliament

Reverend Firth, a former priest from Darlington, tells the Home Affairs Committee he had been told that "as a result of the evidence you give today, people might try to get you".

Firth adds that "it is a sad state of affairs people" because people might slightly "feel intimidated by giving evidence".

Former Church of England priest Reverend Matthew Firth rose to prominence last month after claiming that his previous institution was operating a “conveyor belt” of asylum seeker baptisms. Here are a few things to know about him:

• Rev Matthew Firth, 41, is an evangelical priest in the Free Church of England
• He was previously a priest with the Church of England and oversaw St Cuthbert's Church in Darlington, a part of the Diocese of Durham
• He left this post in 2020 after claiming he had been bullied. A spokesperson for the diocese rejected, external those accusations at the time
• In February, he told the Daily Telegraph, external he personally witnessed 20 cases of failed asylum seekers requesting baptism during his time with the Church, and believes there are thousands more cases
• The diocese “robustly rejected” his accounting, writing shortly after the article broke that in the last decade, Firth’s church oversaw just 15 baptisms of possible asylum seekers; seven of these were overseen by Firth himself.

First up we are hearing from Reverend Matthew Firth.

He is a former priest at St Cuthbert’s Church in Darlington who recently said he knew of about 20 cases where failed asylum seekers sought baptisms to support their appeals to remain in the UK.

Later we’ll be hearing from Tom Pursglove, the MP for Corby and the minister for legal migration and delivery.

The committee will also hear evidence from a number of Church leaders, including: Reverend Canon Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales; and the Right Reverend Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Image source, PA Media

Alleged Clapham attacker Abdul Shokoor Ezedi is understood to have arrived in the UK from Afghanistan in a lorry in 2016.

Ezedi was living in Newcastle, where in 2018 he had been convicted of one charge of sexual assault and one of exposure.

Little is known about Ezedi's life before his arrival in the UK in 2016 but later that year, he first applied for asylum and was refused.

His claim was refused a second time at an unknown date. In this application, he said he had converted to Christianity, meaning he would have been at risk if he returned to Afghanistan.

Ezedi appealed against this Home Office decision and a tribunal overturned it in 2020, having heard from a church witness who said he believed that Ezedi had converted to Christianity.