Chuka Umunna urges all parties to tackle social segregation or face greater far-right threat

All political parties must do more to tackle social segregation in the UK or the far-right will "seek to use the issue for their own nasty ends", Chuka Umunna has told The Independent.

The MP for Streatham, who also chairs the all party parliamentary group on social integration, urged politicians to acknowledge there was a problem and said the issue had been “swept under the carpet” for too long.

Several areas in Britain, including Blackburn and Luton, have been highlighted in recent years for having a significant divide between communities.

A recent BBC Panorama programme claimed in Blackburn in particular the Muslim Asian community and white residents lived separately with many "in fear" of the other group.

In the past Mr Umunna had described the issue of integration as a “national crisis” and stressed that segregation of communities can lead to a “vacuum where extremes on both ends can step in” and “stir the pot of hatred”.

“I think we need to do more. I think all parties should do more. I don’t think you can blame or place the will to do more on any particular party. All parties need to be seeking to do more on integration,” he said.

He also stressed that a selective approach to dealing with the problem would result in greater divisions in society.

“You cannot ignore the cultural dimensions of this. If you do, the problem is, you leave the field open to the far-right who will seek to use that field for their own nasty ends,” Mr Umunna said.

In 2016, Dame Louise Casey was commissioned by then Prime Minister David Cameron to produce a review that would consider what steps were required to “boost opportunity and integration in our most isolated and deprived communities in Great Britain”.

The Casey Review found that successive governments had failed for more than a decade to ensure integration had kept up with immigration and she personally slammed politician’s attempts to boost integration as no more than “saris, samosas and steel drums for the already well-intentioned”.

Mr Umunna has now called for a range of policies to be implemented to ensure that more emphasis is placed on ensuring integration.

“I think we should have statutory duties on local authorities followed up with financial resource to be able to handle demographic change in their communities, population changes and to help newcomers integrate to their community.

“The second thing we need to do is help people with English language learning. Our research shows that almost one million people in our country do not talk English to a sufficient level,” he said.

A parliamentary report from the all-party group on social integration that Mr Umunna chairs, proposed that new immigrants to Britain should be made to learn English on arrival in compulsory classes and that it was a “prerequisite for meaningful engagement with most British people”.

Mr Umunna stressed that the majority of immigrants want to learn to speak English and said that there were often “numerous obstacles in the way”, including working long hours.

To tackle this he called on employers to give people time off to take English lessons and said there was a desire amongst those who do not speak English to learn.