If we can take such good care of our criminals, if we are so concerned about respecting their human rights, then why is it that we can turn such a blind eye to the plight of asylum seekers on our own doorsteps and deny them the most basic rights that come from being made in the image of God - food, water, shelter?
What is even more remarkable than the Government's total lack of conscience is the fact that the consciences of the church and society also remain to an alarming extent unpricked by the plight of destitute asylum seekers. They might not be the ones packing the despairing men, women and children into the planes to be sent home but they are standing by and allowing it to continue by not speaking out.
The Government's strategy of destitution and deportation is not too far off in its vulgarity from human trafficking. But while that enjoys the public abhorrence of the Government, its deliberate policy of starving out refused asylum seekers remains a wholly institutionalised form of cruelty to our fellow human beings, tacitly consented to by the silence of the people.
There is a very touching moment in the film "Amazing Grace" when John Newton, the slave trader turned Christian, realises that the thousands of Africans he savagely traded and shipped across the Atlantic each had "beautiful African names".
Does the Labour Government know any of the names of the people it guiltlessly ships back to cruel and murderous regimes, or the refused asylum seekers who wander like ghosts through the UK's streets, penniless, helpless and hopeless? Does it care?
The slave trade has finally invoked the penitence from state and society that it deserves, thanks in large part to the church's drive to bring it to public attention.
Now the church must take up a new fight: the fight to see destitute asylum seekers treated as human beings in our country, with the right to paid employment so they can take care of themselves properly.
Asylum seekers do not come to this country to "steal our benefits". Our "benefits" are their rights. They come to our country to ask for the things they are entitled to as fellow human beings - food, water, shelter, clothing, medical care, life itself - because their own countries fail to provide them with these essentials.
They may not be fellow citizens but they are fellow human beings, they were made by God, they have names. The only qualification for food, for water, for shelter, is to be a human being. A person cannot steal what is already his. So, Mr Reid, who is stealing from whom?
"I tell you truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." (NIV, Matthew 25:45)
