Familiar sounding debate
Debate call on 'multicultural' UK
A senior Tory has called for a "grown-up" debate on immigration after a race equality campaigner said the pursuit of 'multiculturalism' should be ditched.
Alan Duncan said diversity should be welcomed but argued past assumptions about the UK's need for immigration should now be debated.
The Commission for Racial Equality's chairman has also said it is time to stress common strands of Britishness.
Lord Falconer meanwhile highlighted the financial benefits of immigration.
Commission role
British people should be able to celebrate their culture without it seeming offensive to others, he added.
Trevor Phillips - who chairs the Commission for Racial Equality - meanwhile repeated his assertion that the term "multiculturalism" suggested separateness and had ceased to be useful in modern Britain.
It was necessary to "assert a core of Britishness" for all citizens which meant stressing shared values such as believing in democracy and the rule of law.
One of the founding principles of the commission Mr Phillips oversees is multiculturalism - a policy followed by successive government since the 1960s.
It was originally designed to strengthen engagement and relations between Britain's different ethnic communities.
Lost Shakespeare?
But Mr Phillips said the term suggested "separateness" and was no longer useful in present-day Britain.
"We are now in a different world from the 60s and 70s," he said.
"For instance, I hate the way this country has lost Shakespeare. That sort of thing is bad for immigrants.
"They want to come here not just because of jobs but because they like this country - its tolerance, its eccentricity, its Parliamentary democracy, its energy in the big cities.
"They don't want that to change," he said.
