A heated dispute broke out on GB News when political commentator Chloe Dobbs and fellow panellist Fahima Mahomed clashed over the placement of asylum seekers in Rotherham hotels.
The disagreement centred on Dobbs's assertion that housing migrants in the South Yorkshire town was particularly inappropriate given its troubled past with the grooming gangs scandal.
Mahomed strongly challenged this view, accusing Dobbs of tarring all asylum seekers with the same brush based on crimes committed by a small number of individuals.
The row happened against a backdrop of ongoing demonstrations at asylum accommodation sites.
GB NEWS
|Chloe Dobbs labelled it a "huge slap in the face"
Political commentator Chloe Dobbs said on GB News: "I think if you talk to most families with a few children and ask how often they can afford to go to the cinema, when tickets are over £10 sometimes £15 each, they’ll say ‘we rarely can go. It’s a slap in the face.’
"But the other thing that’s a big slap in the face about this story is that it’s about migrants in Rotherham.
"This really infuriates me, the Home Office is opening migrant hotels in a town where the girls have already suffered enough abuse and are terrified to walk down the street because of the horrific grooming gangs issue there.
"And then they say, ‘Oh, let’s just open a few migrant hotels as well, with a bunch of unvetted men who have just turned up here on boats.’ That infuriates me. I had a mother contact me from Rotherham saying they’d opened one right opposite a school. We hear it time and time again it’s an absolute slap in the face to parents and girls."
Fahima Mahomed responded: "What infuriates me is that you are associating a whole group of people with those who have committed crimes, when in reality they are a minority within a minority.
"Now you want to inflate it and inflame the situation being the sort of person, like so many others, who protest against migrants and say, ‘This is what happened in one community, so now all of them are the same.’"
Dobbs fired back: "No. That is not what I was saying."
Mahomed explained: "That's exactly what I heard."
Dobbs fumed and clarified her response: "Absolutely not, I did not."
Mahomed said: "Yes, you did."
GB NEWS
|Chloe Dobbs was left furious by the comments
Dobbs fumed: "No, no. Will you let me answer so I can actually explain my position?
"I did not say that. What I am saying is that people who come across on boats the most common groups that they come from, according to the statistics we have suggest there is a higher propensity for them to commit certain crimes, like sexual assaults and rapes.
"That does not mean that every single one of them is going to do that thing.
"I have not said, and I will never say, that every single person who comes across on a boat is going to rape somebody. Absolutely not."