770,000 migrants don’t speak English

Government pledges £50million to boost learning

THREE quarters of a million people who have settled in the UK are not able to integrate in society because they do not speak English, Sajid Javid has said. The Communities Secretary revealed 770,000 people ‘speak no or very poor English’ – meaning even daily tasks such as shopping become difficult.

To tackle this, he hopes to roll out a new community-based English language programme, with a network of ‘conversation clubs’.

He will also provide extra support for councils to improve provision of tuition, and lay on skills training to help women from ‘isolated’ communities into work.

Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Just imagine the opportunities they have given up on, the inability they have to socially mix with others and really contribute to society. It’s not fair on them and it’s not fair on the rest of society.’

Mr Javid, whose family came to the UK from Pakistan, said his mother took over ten years to learn English.

He said: ‘When I was a young child, I sometimes had to miss school so that I could go to the doctor with my mother. But it wasn’t because I was ill.

It was because more than a decade after arriving from Pakistan she still barely spoke a word of English and needed me – her sixyear-old son – to translate for her.

‘For me, it was an early introduction to the way in which issues such as language skills create barriers to integration ... eventually, my mother decided she’d be better off if she learned English.

‘Today she’s fluent, and gets so much from it – whether that’s engaging with everything society has to offer or chatting happily with her grandchildren.’ His proposals, backed by £50million of public money, build on a 2016 report by Dame Louise Casey, who welcomed them yesterday and said it was important as a nation to ‘speak a common language’.

However, she questioned whether there was enough money in the system to fund more English language provision.

Pressed on whether the money promised to support the strategy was enough, Mr Javid said: ‘It’s not just about the £50million, there’s actually a substantial amount the Government already spends on helping people learn English.’

But ‘there hasn’t been enough of a joined-up approach’ between Whitehall and local government, he acknowledged. Highlighting the ‘segregation problem’ in schools, Mr Javid said: “We believe about 60 per cent of ethnic minority pupils... they go to schools where ethnic minority pupils are in the majority.

‘If you just think about that and the amount of segregation that has been caused by schools, something new has to be done.’

Yesterday’s wide-ranging proposals also suggest providing information to migrants before they arrive in the UK, to give them a ‘clear expectation about life in modern Britain’ including laws and norms. The information packs provided for those migrating to this country could involve information on how to get a bus or how you go to the dentist, it is understood.

Dame Louise backed the measures to promote English tuition, telling Today: ‘It is really important that as a nation we are all able to speak a common language, and that common language is English.’

But she warned that funding of £50million over two years would not be enough to deliver the ‘seismic’ shift needed.

Mr Javid’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is seeking responses to proposed initiatives set out in a new green paper.