When writing about refugees, one rule of thumb: be more sensitive than Theresa May

Theresa May sought to rouse a rabble with her speech at the Conservative conference last week by taking aim at excessive immigration and “abusers” of the asylum system. Several newspapers summed up her position as being an attack on “bogus” refugees.

In the years after 9/11, some sections of the British media lumped together fears about Islamic fundamentalism with concerns about misuse of the UK’s asylum arrangements. There seemed to be a belief in some quarters that every extremist in the country had exploited a loophole to obtain refugee status. “Illegal asylum-seekers” were everywhere: plotting attacks or eating our swans.

Working with organisations such as the Refugee Council, the Press Complaints Commission produced guidance highlighting the importance of terminology, noting particularly that there could be no such thing as an “illegal” asylum-seeker, or an “illegal refugee” for that matter. Those whose asylum applications were rejected might be “failed” asylum-seekers, or potentially even “illegal immigrants” if they had illegitimately stayed in the country. But the crucial point was that “refugee” and “asylum-seeker” were legal definitions – they required careful use.

That PCC guidance did not, however, specifically rule out the use of “bogus”. It is, after all, a much vaguer term, indicating some degree of doubt about an asylum-seeker’s claim for refugee status. As a description, it was certainly open to criticism, just as its imprecision made it hard to prohibit, so it created the potential for the word to be bandied around without due thought. Ultimately, though, if we accept that some asylum claims will eventually be dismissed, we cannot simply ban words that query their veracity in the first place.

Even so, it is imperative that the media deals with the issue responsibly to ensure that refugees and asylum-seekers – many of them vulnerable, bereft and in desperate need of help – do not become demonised en masse. The Home Secretary’s speech last week was dangerous exactly because it tapped into that narrative: refugees as “other”, as untrustworthy, even in their claims for asylum. Her call for the legal definitions of refugee and asylum-seeker to be revisited implied that those granted protection here in the past might not really have been deserving of it.

We cannot, of course, be closed-minded on this question. But surely the most moral starting point is that the UK, a prosperous and peaceful country, should offer help to as many people as possible, with genuinely undeserving cases subsequently identified. Ms May appears to offer precisely the opposite approach: doing everything to keep people out then selecting a few particularly tragic cases for asylum in order to keep pangs of guilt at arm’s length. It is an insular and unappealing way of doing things.

On transparency and tedium

Online articles are sometimes amended after they have first been published. Should we alert readers to every change?

There is merit in transparency, but there is also something deathly dull and frankly rather pious about a footnote which records that a line was amended on such and such a date because, say, the tree involved in a boundary dispute was an oak, not an ash. Furthermore, anyone who saw the inaccurate version is unlikely to return to it.

Really substantive changes may be worth noting. But tiddly tweaks do not require an explanation.

‘Refugee’ and ‘asylumseeker’ are legal definitions and require careful use

Will Gore is deputy managing editor of The Independent, i, Independent on Sunday and the Evening Standard Twitter: @willjgore