SOME members of the nation’s Asian communities have barely met a non-Muslim native British person in the 40 years they have lived here, MP Sajid Javid said today.
By Jon Rogers
Communities and Local Government minister Mr Javid added it was especially worrying that women in Asian communities were twice as likely as men to speak no English and that he had seen friends packed off to the subcontinent to find a wife because marrying a British woman was still simply “too shocking.”
And he accused successive Governments of failing to tackle the problem head-on for fear of appearing racist.
Mr Javid is now calling for ethnic minorities, and especially women, to be given more help in integrating into British life.
Women in London wait at a bus stop
Mr Javid, drawing on his own childhood experience of growing up in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, said: “There are people I knew as a child who in the past 40 years have met only a handful of people from outside the south Asian Muslim community.
“I can name individuals in my hometown of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, who have lived in this country for half a century but speak barely a word of English.”
Immigrant children attend school in the UK
“I will not allow that to continue.”
“That’s something we all too often forget.”
Secretary of State Sajid Javid leaves Number 10
Mr Javid is expected to make an official response to Dame Gray’s report in the spring 2017