Green: Telling people what to wear is un-British
Damian Green, immigration minister, comments on the prospect of a burkha ban to the Sunday Telegraph:
“I stand personally on the feeling that telling people what they can and can’t wear, if they’re just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do.
“We’re a tolerant and mutually respectful society.
“There are times, clearly, when you’ve got to be able to identify yourself, and people have got to be able to see your face, but I think it’s very unlikely and it would be undesirable for the British parliament to try and pass a law dictating what people wore.
“I think very few women in France actually wear the burkha. They [the French parliament] are doing it for demonstration effects.
“The French political culture is very different. They are an aggressively secular state. They can ban the burkha, they ban crucifixes in schools and things like that.
“We have schools run explicitly by religions. I think there’s absolutely no read-across to immigration policy from what the French are doing about the burkha.”
