Dame Louise Casey said the Government needs to do much more to gain equality for women and the white working class population (file pic)
Ministers should set a date for ‘everybody in the country’ to speak English, the Government’s former integration Tsar has urged.
Dame Louise Casey said the Government needs to do much more to tackle inequality between men and women and disadvantage among the working class population.
And she said that setting a deadline for everyone living in Britain to speak the same tongue will help ‘heal the rifts’ that have broken out across the country.
Her comments come just over a year after he issued her bombshell report on integration which warned ghettos have emerged because the pace of immigration was too fast.
Among her proposals was a demand for all new migrants to Britain to take an oath of allegiance where they promise to embrace liberal values before arriving.
Dame Louise said: ‘I would be quite old school about this and I would set a target that says by “x” date we want everybody in the country to be able to speak a common language.’
She added: ‘I don’t care how we’ve got here, I don’t care who can’t speak English [and] I don’t care what’s going on.
‘But what I do know is everybody of working age and of school age should be able to speak one language and I think the public in particular would feel some relief.’
But 14 months after the report was published Dame Louise hit out at ministers for not having implemented her recommendations.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, Dame Louise said that integration should be ‘one of the most significant priorities’ for the government.
And she said that any more delays to the strategy would be ‘incredibly frustrating’.
The Integrated Communities Strategy is due to be published later this week.
Dame Louise said Theresa May (pictured heading to church yesterday with her husband Philip) should set a date for ‘everybody in the country’ to speak English
Dame Louise urged the PM to tackle the north south divide and white working class communities who feel left behind.
She said: ‘I think parts of the North, where we’ve got a very significant white working class population who feel incredibly alienated, who do not have, frankly, hope… they can’t say that their kids will grow up [with] better lives than they have themselves.
‘It’s not only about the tides of immigration and migration and English language, but some of this is about equalities for women, as well as equalities overall, as well as in terms of social and economic disadvantage.
‘Let’s see what they come up with.’
Conservative MP and former immigration minister Mark Harper said the government had made changes to immigration rules to require a ‘better level of the English language’ when people came into the UK
He added: ‘I think the recommendations she has made are very powerful and I hope the government produces an ambitious strategy.’