Last week the Government released Dame Louise Casey’s Report on integration and opportunity in Britain. This is a long-overdue review into Britain’s social fabric that presents many difficult findings and poses questions for all of us about how we create a more united nation.
The Report was originally commissioned by then Prime Minister David Cameron and Theresa May – as Home Secretary – to review all aspect of British life.
As Dame Casey says in the introduction, “Social cohesion and equality are not things we can take for granted” and “the less integrated we are as a nation, the greater the economic and social costs we face – estimated as approximately £6 billion each year in one study.”
Most of the press coverage for the Report last week covered the challenges for Britain’s 1.2 million Muslim community. As the report points out:
- People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity tend to live in more residentially segregated communities than other ethnic minority groups.
- Whilst many British Muslims feel positive about Britishness, polls also highlight differences in attitudes, with some Muslims and some other minority groups express less progressive views, for example towards women’s equality, sexuality and freedom of speech.
- The English language is a strong enabler of integration but Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups have the lowest levels of English language proficiency of any Black or Minority Ethnic group – and women in those communities are twice as likely as men to have poor English.
These are just a few of the undesirable statistics in the Report, and undoubtedly it raises difficult questions for Government, the wider population and the Muslim Community.
Yet it would be wrong to conclude that this Report is simply a case of ‘one community bad, all the others good’. Far from it. There are detailed sections on where other groups are struggling, including both the British Indian and British Hindu communities.
As a Hindu I am very proud of how my community has largely integrated and adopted British values as their own. The Hindu Forum’s adoption of the slogan ‘Proud to be British, Proud to be Hindu’ has helped to demonstrate our priorities.
Simple things like holding events in English, promoting both tolerance and the importance of democracy, and prioritising education for our children have allowed us to become part of the wider community.
However it would be wrong to assume that we are as integrated as we could – or should – be. From my own experiences I can highlight a number of areas where the Hindu community tends to be less ‘progressive’ than the rest of Britain; the Hindu community still needs to be more open to outsiders, more accepting of recent social developments – for example LBGT equality - and better at civic duty.
I hope we use this Report as an opportunity to think – at both a local and a national level – what more we can do to integrate. How do we encourage everyone to adopt the English language? Are our Temples, Community Centres and other institutions equal on gender? Do we hold ourselves to the highest Governance standards with free and fair elections?
As Dame Casey says, we are a compassionate, tolerant and liberal country. Creating a just, fair society where everyone can prosper and get on is a cornerstone of Britain’s values. Resilience, integration and shared common values – such as respect for the rule of law, democracy, equality and tolerance – are inhibitors of division, hate and extremism. They make us stronger, more equal, more united and able to stand together as one nation.
We know that, with record levels of immigration in recent years, the scale of population change has been having an impact, particularly in deprived areas, at a time when Britain has been recovering from a recession and concerns about terrorism, immigration, the economy and the future of public services have been running high.
But we also know why Britain attracts so many people from abroad. It isn’t just our economic strength, or – as some would have you believe – our benefits system. It is the values that powered and united this country for centuries. We cannot afford to let them slip.
Perhaps the most brutal line in the Report is this simple statement: “As a nation we have lost sight of our expectations on integration and lacked confidence in promoting it or challenging behaviours that undermine it.”
“We know that where communities live separately, with fewer interactions between people from different backgrounds, mistrust, anxiety and prejudice grow” says the Report. It goes onto say that “too many public institutions, national and local, state and non-state, have gone so far to accommodate diversity and freedom of expression that they have ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic.”
This Report isn’t just a challenge for Britain’s Muslim community, it’s a challenge to Government, to every minority and faith community and to the country at large. What more can we do to make our country more integrated?
We should not be afraid to discuss these matters and we should be determined to solve these problems. Dame Casey’s report is merely one step towards a solution, now it is for us to act.
