Priti 4 Witham

Thanks to my interest in other cultures, my work and the global spread of my family (us Patel’s get everywhere!), I have been lucky enough to have visited many countries around the world. Most recently, I have been in the Gulf, a region which is a global mutli-ethnic melting pot (no need for ‘community cohesion’ officials there). Towards the end of my stay, I was interested to hear the views of immigrants who live and work in the Gulf about how they have adapted to living in a new and very different country from home and also to living in a country which has strong religious traditions and limits on individual freedoms. The Brit’s I spoke to contrasted their experience of building a new life in a new country to that of immigrants in the United Kingdom. Immigrants to the UAE generally respect their new country, its laws, the culture and traditions and they integrate into day to day life in the UAE. The Brit’s I meet all said that having moved abroad and become part of UAE society they are nonetheless British and proud to be British – they just don’t feel the need to make a song and dance about it.  This is off course is a stark contrast to the behaviour of many immigrants in Britain. In light of the recent terrorist activity and the routes through which these terrorists came to the UK (as so-called key workers), its about time that our government reminded every immigrant to Britain, that our laws and customs are there for a reason – to be lived by and respected. If they wish to live here, they should respect our way of life, our traditions and culture. In short they should be told to integrate and become an active part of modern British society – if they don’t, they are welcome to leave. Of course the other measure we desperately need is the re-introduction of border controls – only then will we stop the influx of such radicalised terrorists into our country…..

Having so moved on from that ‘pointless’ debate which has consumed the Conservative Party over the past few days, I wanted to flag up another area of public policy where one MP and a Labour MP is not afraid to tell it how it is – even if does whip up a bit of unease ‘out there’.

Margaret Hodge, a government minister has said that established British families should be given priority over economic migrants for council housing and called for housing rules to “promote tolerance rather than inviting division”.

One Labour MP has already responded by calling Hodge’s remark’s ‘offensive’, which is his view, but it fails to address the fact that immigration has become one of the issues which most concerns the British public – whether it’s the amount of immigration, government policy or its impact upon local services, schools, housing and health care across the country.

So without stating the obvious Labour and Margaret Hodge have had ten long years to grasp this issue and they have failed. This country needs annual limits on immigration and for all political parties to stop hiding behind the cloak of political correctness so that a full and frank debate about immigration and its implications can take place – and not more hot air from this failed Labour government.