Britain ‘should set a target date for everyone in the country to speak English’

The government should set a target date for everyone in the UK to speak English in order to encourage integration, a former official has said.

Making the proposal, Dame Louise Casey said a “common language” would help to “heal rifts across Britain”.

Dame Louise, who wrote a report for the government in 2016 on integration, said the English language needed a “significant” boost.

Her comments came as the government readies a new Integrated Communities Strategy to be published on Wednesday.

Dame Louise, the former head of the government’s Respect task force, said: “I don’t care how we’ve got here, I don’t care who can’t speak English, I don’t care what’s going on but what I do know is that everybody of working age and of school age should be able to speak the language.

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“And I think the public in particular would feel some relief. And 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’.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour, she said: “Those are the sorts of big, bold policies that I think we need in order to heal some of the rifts across Britain.”

Dame Louise has criticised the government for not taking any action since the publication two years ago of her integration report, which recommended additional funding to promote English language skills.

She added: “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.”

Former immigration minister and Conservative MP Mark Harper said the government had made changes to require a “better level of the English language” when people from other countries arrived in the UK.

He told Westminster Hour: “I think the recommendations she has made are very powerful and I hope the government produces an ambitious strategy.”