David Blunkett: We cannot simply open our borders and let everyone in

The Home Secretary addresses the issues raised by a 13-year-old asylum-seeker

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'Dear Mr Blunkett. Please don't send my family back to Slovakia. Let me stay at school'

I would like to answer the open letter from Nikola Garzova, the little girl of 13 from Slovakia, featured in The Independent on Sunday on 5 May. There have also been serious misunderstandings in the accompanying article about the Government's plans for asylum-seeker accommodation centres, which I would like to address. I want to make it clear that ministers will always ensure thorough consideration of each case, and we are deeply sympathetic to those who are genuinely fleeing persecution.

Nikola, it would not be right for me to discuss the detail of your family's case in a newspaper. But I promise you that your case – just like that of every other family who claims asylum here – will be considered fairly, properly and impartially. Whatever the eventual outcome, our decision will have been taken after very careful thought and according to the same rules that apply to everyone. As you know, your family has now moved into supported accommodation, which I know was one of the points you were keen to address.

However, this little girl's case has been used to misrepresent my plans to reform the asylum system and put in place a seamless, end-to-end asylum process. Under proposals in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, asylum-seekers would spend their first few days in an induction centre having the process explained to them and receiving any health- care they need. They would then live in an open accommodation centre for a few months while their case was considered. Once a decision has been made, those given refugee status will be integrated into local communities (and schools), and those with unfounded claims will be removed from the country. Removal centres are employed in the last part of the process.

There are many people from all over the world who would like to come and live in Britain. We cannot simply open our borders and allow all of them to come here, or we would not have a balanced and managed migration policy. We are doubling the numbers of those who will be entitled to work permits and therefore to come here to work and to live. And we are trying to make sense of the system for people who are seeking refuge from persecution and death and who come here. We are doing this by working with the United Nations on providing a way into the country that avoids people having to get here first before being able to prove that they were being persecuted elsewhere.

We already have the second-largest number of people claiming asylum in Europe after Germany, which is of course half as big again in population terms as Britain. This is why we need policies that not only work in the interests of everyone but also secure good race and community relations in this country. So let me address those who criticise us over the education of refugee children.

I am proposing that for the foreseeable future, the bulk of children of asylum-seeking families will be educated in the neighbourhood school. There is a lot more we can do to facilitate this and to avoid the situation in which the children of asylum-seekers end up only in the those schools where there are empty places.

It's a simple equation. The bulk of dispersal facilities across the country are in areas where there is property readily available. And that readily available property is in low-demand areas and often in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Those disadvantaged neighbourhoods often have schools with places available precisely because they have been struggling to lift their stand-ards, and parents have opted to send their children elsewhere.

Over the past five years, we have done everything possible to raise the standard in those schools and to ensure that they are attractive, but it is a fact of life that when there is an influx of new entrants in the community, it is these schools and not those in the leafy suburbs who take the children.

As I once attempted to explain to those who write articles attacking me: please do not advocate for the children of other parents what you would not put up with for your own children.

To avoid such pressure on schools and other services in the future, we are putting into place a trial programme of accommodation centres. These are not detention centres but open-provision accommodation with facilities on-site. Accommodation centres will provide education, facilities for healthcare, and residents will have access to legal advice. The education will be full-time, will provide the national curriculum and will be inspected by the Office of Standards in Education.

It doesn't matter whether an accommodation centre is in a rural or in an urban setting. What matters is that in such circumstances, there are bound to be very large numbers of youngsters who would have to go to neighbouring schools. It would simply not be possible to bus them right across the sub-region, and in any case, for the reasons I've spelt out above, only some of the schools would have places. It is those schools with places, those facing the biggest challenges who would of course take the children. This is what I was trying to explain a couple of weeks ago when a storm broke out from those who hadn't taken the trouble either to read about the proposals or subsequently to take any notice of the very measured and rational debate in the House of Commons.

This is where our national media, including The Independent on Sunday, can help. Actually telling the truth, explaining what is intended and not exaggerating or simply misleading, would help enormously. These are difficult and sensitive issues. They are rarely addressed by those who have any experience of them and when they do – because they have no experience but merely view it from a distance – they sadly get it wrong.

I happen to have a dispersal centre in my constituency. I happen to have schools which take very large numbers of youngsters with English as a second language (not as migrants but often as a temporary transient residence). As a consequence, I am very well aware of both the potential they offer, the talent they bring and the challenge they also provide in relation both to their own needs and those of children who are already struggling. This is the reality, and it's one I intend to address.