An MP has accepted calls from a church minister to meet asylum seekers in person.

Councillor the Reverend Paul Flowers urged Shipley MP Philip Davies to meet people who have fled their home countries at his church following comments reported by the Telegraph & Argus last month.

The Tory MP said he feared people who were struggling to be housed were being forced to vote for the right-wing extremist British National Party because of large numbers of asylum seekers in the Bradford area.

Latest figures revealed more asylum seekers were living in Government-funded accommodation in Yorkshire than anywhere else in the country.

Coun Flowers said while Mr Davies' views are often "full of rational common sense", on other occasions "that good sense seems to depart him."

Mr Davies' concerns over asylum seekers were "a case in point", according to Coun Flowers.

He said: "I suspect, although I may of course be wrong, that Mr Davies hasn't actually met many asylum seekers or refugees in the course of his relatively short Parliamentary career. So I'd like to help him out and hopefully broaden his knowledge.

"My church in Great Horton has been much blessed and enlivened in recent years by an influx of many people from other parts of the world.

"Among them are several good and interesting people who, for various reasons, have fled their countries of origin, and are now refugees or asylum seekers."

Mr Davies has accepted the invitation and said he looks forward to meeting the "genuine asylum seekers".

"I am more than happy to have the meeting and I want to do more for genuine asylum seekers," he said.

"No-one doubts how awful it is for people who flee persecution. Genuine asylum seekers are being held back by others who are not fleeing persecution.

"I have people come into my surgeries and it is awful for them."

The figures released by the Home Office showed nearly 7,500 asylum seekers are in Government-funded accommodation in Yorkshire - more than a fifth of the entire number in the UK.

A total of 745 are placed in the "dispersal accommodation" in Bradford, 240 in Calderdale, 780 in Kirklees and 2,015 in Leeds.

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