STUART Monk began to stutter. He was struggling to get his words out. He was not speaking in sentences, but paraphrases of different meanings strung together.

The head of North-East property firm Jomast was clearly under enormous pressure on Tuesday as he faced a grilling by the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Monk, who lives in a manor house near Stokesley, North Yorkshire, is at the centre of a media storm.

He found himself on the front page of The Times a week ago after it was discovered that asylum seekers living in his company’s properties in Middlesbrough were clearly identifiable by Jomast’s cheap, wooden red doors. This, some of the refugees claimed, singled them out for abuse and vandalism.

One man said he was plagued by arsonists, another by vandals. But, in equal measure, there were refugees who said they liked living in Middlesbrough and had received a warm welcome.

Several years ago former Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon called Gresham “a cancer” that needed to be cut out of the town, as he started bulldozing the area. Gresham was plagued with problems – prostitution, vandalism, drug use, theft.

When the economic crisis hit, he halted the demolition, leaving some streets in the area half knocked down. Gresham looked like a wasteland, empty shops, deserted, crime-ridden streets and half-demolished terraces.

Now, say some of the refugee charities, it is coming back to life. At the weekend there were children from different nationalities playing outside in the street. One of the asylum seekers, unable to work, volunteers at the school. Others who have been granted leave to stay are setting up businesses, filling the once-empty shops.

It remains one of the most deprived areas in the country and is still crime-ridden.

This is where the real issue lies. Not necessarily with red doors, but the fact that the most vulnerable people in our society are coming into the most deprived, crime-hit areas.

Middlesbrough has more than the recommended one refugee per 200 people, at one in 173, while Stockton has one in 259 people. Can these places afford to support asylum seekers when council budgets will soon be determined by how prosperous an area is – those earning higher business rates will be able to keep some of them.

Cheshire East, Bath, and Northumberland have just one asylum seeker in hundreds of thousands of people.

It’s understandable that the Government wants to keep costs down, and there are more asylum seekers in cheaper areas.

But some of the conditions they live in are questionable. Refugee workers have raised concerns about pregnant women living in unsuitable accommodation, while some said workers from Jomast just let themselves into the properties whenever they like, to carry out work.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna accused Mr Monk of profiting from deprivation and people’s need for refuge. While G4S, which subcontracts the asylum contract to Jomast in Teesside, said it was a loss-making contract for the services giant, Mr Monk was unable to tell the committee how profitable it was for Jomast, only saying it was “not very profitable”, despite making up about 30 per cent of his business.

To me, it is absolutely unthinkable that the owner and chief executive of a company wouldn’t know how profitable one of his biggest contracts is.

Mr Monk was named on the Sunday Times Rich List as having a family fortune of £175m.

The issue is, perhaps, not red doors marking out asylum seekers, but allowing anyone to profit on the back of some of the most vulnerable people in society, in one of the most deprived wards in the country.