Tory MP may be red-eared after telling Commons he could not get a haircut because his refugee barber was visiting Iraq

Next time he gets his hair cut, Adam Holloway, the Conservative MP, faces an awkward moment with his barber.

In a speech denouncing asylum seekers, the MP for Gravesham told the Commons on Tuesday that he could not get his hair cut because his barber, a refugee, had gone on holiday to the country he had fled.

“We have people in this country who have come here, claimed asylum and then they go back on holiday in the places where they’ve claimed asylum from,” Holloway said. “I couldn’t have my hair cut the other day for that reason.”

But Shivan Saeed, who regularly cuts Holloway’s hair at Kent Barbers, Gravesend, has now come forward to reveal that, far from going to Iraq, he in fact spent a week with his family in a caravan in Great Yarmouth.

“It’s dangerous to go back to Iraq – if I wanted to go back there why would I have come here?” the 23-year-old told the Daily Mail. “Next time I see him, I will tell him. I am not annoyed – I am alright with it. He just got it wrong.”

In his first holiday since arriving in the UK seven years ago, Saeed took his British-born wife, Chelsea, and their son to the Hemsby Beach Holiday Village in Norfolk. “We went on the beach, went to the arcades and stayed in a little caravan,” he said.

The development will cause fresh embarrassment for Holloway, who was already being mocked by fellow MPs and on Twitter for his 20-minute speech on Tuesday. Downing Street also distanced itself from his remarks, the Mirror reported.

Holloway told the Guardian on Thursday that he was disappointed that reports of his speech had ignored the broader point he sought to make. He had told MPs of times he had spent among both asylum seekers and economic migrants, and insisted a distinction must be drawn between them.

Holloway told the Guardian: “There is a reality here and that truth is, and I’ve got two examples from my own anecdotal experience, that there are plenty of people who come into the UK, claim asylum and when they get their travel documents, they quite understandably go home to see their parents.

“This whole question of opening Europe’s borders to refugees, it needs to be seen really seriously. In my experience, as someone who lived in the Sangatte camp in Calais, there is such a thing as an economic migrant and there is such a thing as an asylum seeker, and I have every sympathy for economic migrants as I do for refugees.”

However, he added: “At the moment we are completely failing. The situation with those 11 million displaced people in Syria is a global scandal and we are not going anywhere in helping them.”

Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: “Doubtless, Adam Holloway will be saying sorry to his barber for getting the wrong end of the stick.

“But in a strange way he’s done us all a favour in highlighting a very heartwarming story of a hard-working refugee, who’s built a new life in the UK with his British wife and their small child. Like millions of other Britons, he was just taking a short and well-deserved break at the English seaside.”

Becca! (@Becca_DP) i can't wait to see adam holloway's next haircut tbh

But Don Flynn, chief executive of the Migrants’ Rights Network, said Holloway’s remarks revealed a serious problem in the way refugees and migrants were treated in British political discourse.

He said: “There’s obviously the hilarious aspect of it: a guy getting his comeuppance. But there’s obviously the serious aspect, which is a fair bit of policymaking appears to be driven by anecdotes of this sort.

“This is unfortunately another example of the misleading anecdotes and myths which are circulated about migrants and it’s gratifying that, at least on one occasion, it’s been exposed.”