The Bishop of Durham has revealed a personal reason for criticising the Government's approach to refugees and asylum seekers.
The senior cleric, who has not been afraid of criticising Government policy and last year lambasted Kwasi Kwarteng's infamous tax-slashing mini-budget, told a Newcastle hearing of the Commission on the Integration of Refugees about a friend "ho fled his country because of political violence, he had to leave his wife and child behind, who had to go into hiding in their own country for fear of retribution".
He said: "On arrival he met an official, then never heard anything further for the next 12 months. He has now finally, after four years, had an interview with someone from the Home Office; 10 months later, he is still waiting to hear the outcome of that interview.
Read more: North East takes in 10 times as many asylum seekers as Southern regions
"Having received notification giving him a date when he would be told what it was, that date not being met, it's just inhuman, the way that we are treating people. So, he for me is the constant story in my mind.
"But in the midst of it all, when he was on basic asylum support, half of his money every week was being sent back home to support his family. He did get a letter that told him he had the right to work, obviously in a very limited range of jobs. He's on a zero hours contract and he worked and he's sent basically 90% of the money back to his country of origin to support his family.
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"How he has upheld his own human dignity through all of this, the decency with which he behaves towards every other person is extraordinary. And he says: 'All I want is a safe place to live and my family to join me. I am 100% committed to working hard, paying taxes, engaging in community life, because that's all I ever wanted to do in my own country. To work hard, to contribute to international life. That seems now refused to me. But why is it that this country makes it so hard for me to belong'."
On Friday the Northern Agenda newsletter highlighted the huge North-South divide in which communities accommodate asylum seekers, with the North East's rate of people in 'dispersed accommodation' like flats and shared housing ten times higher than the South East and South West.
The Bishop told the hearing at St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle: "I am increasingly angry about the way that asylum and refugee matters happen in this country, I have been for a long time.
"Particularly when I think some of the struggles have obvious fixes, like when you have a backlog of over 160,000 people [waiting to hear whether they can remain in the country] and you employ some people dealing with this on national minimum wage, or just above it. It’s hardly surprising that neither the staff are capable of dealing with it, nor are they adequate in number.
"One of the other constant themes for me is, this is a global challenge. The number of refugees around the world and displaced people as we know is huge and growing.
"And it is set to grow further, largely because of climate change but also, we don't know what other political situations may occur, we don't know what other unpleasant regimes may emerge in nations which lead people to leave. But it's not going to go away in a hurry.
"So for the UK to set itself on a route which is likely to make working internationally on reaching solutions even harder makes no sense.
"We appear to be about to set a route of not acknowledging international law which has been in place for decades and to try some experiments, which seem at best seriously unlikely to work, really does get me very angry."
Until last year, local authorities voluntarily decided to accommodate asylum seekers but amid fears many Southern areas are not doing their bit the system is now mandatory in the hope of making the regional spread fairer.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The number of people arriving in the UK who seek asylum and require accommodation has reached record levels, placing unprecedented pressures on the asylum system."
The controversial legislation designed to put a stop to migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats has returned to the House of Commons, with Downing Street facing objections to the Bill from both the liberal and the right wings of the Conservative Party. The Bill has been at the centre of controversy, with critics warning that the proposed legislation leaves the UK foul of its international obligations.
But right-wing Tory MPs have signalled that it does not go far enough, with some calling for ministers to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to drive through tighter border controls.
