The Red Cross has been drafted in to act as a middleman between the Home Office and vulnerable asylum seekers being housed in 'horrific' conditions in Glasgow.

Many are too scared to speak out about their accommodation, described as the worst in the UK.

So the British Red Cross has now had to step in as a go-between, MPs have been told.

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The Commons Home Affairs Committee was also told that the outsourcing giant which holds the multi-million pound contract was housing a double amputee in Scotland, and 121 other ‘overstays’, out of its own pocket.

Serco boss Rupert Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, said that his company stood to lose £145m, because the number of expected asylum seekers had risen by 8,000 in Scotland and the north west of England alone.

But critics have accused Serco of using the contract as a “loss leader” to secure other lucrative government jobs.

Susan Munroe, the chief executive of charity Freedom from Torture, told the committee that the British Red Cross had been drafted in.

“It was identified by the Home Office that people who are dependent on the Home Office for their status are unlikely to complain to the Home Office about their accommodation," she said.

As a result the British Red Cross had been brought in to "facilitate feedback directly from residents of asylum accommodation”.

The move would "give residents a voice”, she said.

But she also called for an independent inspection of all asylum accommodation.

The intervention by the Red Cross was welcomed by Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP and a member of the committee.

“It is difficult for people to differentiate between Serco (who hold the contract), Orchard and Shipman (the subcontractors in Glasgow) and the Home Office,” he said.

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“So it is not surprising that people are sometimes reluctant to complain.”

Earlier this year Serco admitted that allegations that 40 people had had to share a kitchen in Glasgow's Tartan Lodge hostel were "substantially correct".

It also said it had been unable to investigate claims that staff taunted asylum seekers with threats of deportation and even handcuffs.

But it rejected reports that some residents had been put in rooms with blood-spattered walls, saying that the substance involved had been fruit juice.

Mr Soames told the committee that he felt “passionately about looking after asylum seekers well”.

He added: “Having said that we will (lose £145m),.. when we are looking after 'overstays' at our open expense... when we have been looking for two years after a double amputee in Scotland whose funding has been cut off... it is quite galling for people to be making out that we are doing it for the money”.

He added that Secro would never pull out of the contract, despite the prospect of losing millions of pounds.

But MPs on the committee said that it was in Serco's wider interest to continue providing asylum accommodation.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna told him that there was a "commercial imperative for you not to just walk away” because Serco's biggest customer, the UK Government, “would not be best pleased “.

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The £1bn organisation, the world’s largest outsourcing giant, runs everything form prisons to train lines and defence contracts globally.

Serco says its 1,860 Glasgow properties meet Home Office standards and are among some of the most heavily inspected in the sector.

Labour MP and former chair of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz described conditions in Glasgow as "horrific" and the worst in the UK when he visited earlier this year.

While in the city he gave an asylum seeker £5 to buy a lightbulb after discovering that he had been using his bathroom light to read his book.