In an overloaded institution like the home office, good initiatives sometimes get forgotten. I was reminded of this when the story broke recently that five illegal immigrants were working for the immigration and nationality directorate. A year or two ago I often worked late in the home office in Whitehall before catching the sleeper back to Edinburgh. As I am a friendly sort of fellow, I would try to chat to the cleaners. But none of them could speak English. (They were, however, almost certainly legal. Back then, before citizens of the new EU states were free to work here, it was easy to get work permits to import unskilled workers.)
One reason I was working late at the home office was because I was chairman of an advisory group which produced a report three years ago entitled "The New and the Old," which recommended new regulations for naturalisation and citizenship. Almost all were accepted and implemented—including citizenship ceremonies and language tests. The one recommendation not accepted was on the funding of language lessons.
There is an established grading of English-language ability called ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) and we recommended that progress from any ESOL grade to the next one up would qualify a migrant for citizenship (plus the old five years' residence with no criminal record). At the lower grades, there is no such thing as a separate citizenship test, but the content of language classes and tests includes useful knowledge about British customs and institutions that should help people to integrate. Alternatively, if applicants believe they are at something called ESOL Entry Level 3, they can take a citizenship test. (Level 3 is the ability to hold a comprehensible conversation on an unexpected topic, but does not require a high level of precision—its aim is to help people get by at work.)
In Britain last year, there were about 5.5m residents born outside the country, of whom only about 60 per cent were citizens. Many of the others work in situations that only demand their native language, and a high proportion have no or inadequate English. A majority are women. The numbers needing English classes have been swelled by an emancipatory but little-noticed clause of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002: citizenship is no longer transferable from spouse to spouse (in practice man to wife) but is individual. So if an immigrant family want to visit home on a British passport, the wife must undergo the language-with-citizenship classes too. Some Muslim traditionalists were not amused by this change, but community leaders had the political sense not to make a row for fear of alienating liberal-minded friends.
We recommended a well-funded campaign in the ethnic minority press about the advantages of taking out citizenship; an expansion of ESOL teaching to match the numbers who should be applying for citizenship; and for applicants to enter free classes at the earliest possible opportunity.
None of the above has been adequately funded. The department for education (DfES) funds ESOL teaching, but it enforces a stupid rule that immigrants do not qualify for free classes under the adult literacy regulations until they have been here three years. The only explanation we ever got for this was that it would "prevent language tourism." The Scottish executive has sensibly used its powers to give colleges discretion. Three years on, many newcomers will have been submerged in their own communities and may already have suffered permanent communication problems with mainstream society. Home office officials lost a battle with the treasury. And then the London bombings not surprisingly distracted ministers. One might think that the bombings should have strengthened the case for adequately funding the path to citizenship. Whatever one means by Britishness, citizenship and integration, the language and some knowledge of the country are surely crucial.
"The New and the Old" stressed the importance of language not just for work but to carry a culture. We saw Britishness, even before the Windrush, as an overarching political-legal culture, based on a tradition of representative government, religious toleration and loyalty to the crown as symbolising the state, but a state that already had within it a diversity of national cultures and religious identities.
Now ministers are talking again about strengthening a sense of Britishness. But they are going about it the wrong way. The DfES has set up a new advisory group looking at integrating diversity into the curriculum and adding "British values through history" as a fourth leg to the citizenship curriculum. But that curriculum is already overloaded and in any case, values are hard to teach—they are better exemplified. Far better to make history compulsory again up to school-leaving age. Ken Clarke, when education minister, foolishly removed history from key stage 4 (14 to 16), and allowed what was left to become thematic rather than a coherent national narrative. We need both history and citizenship for all of our children, new and old Brits alike.
The basic failure to put enough resources behind language as the key to integration lies in the size and diversity of the home office rather than the quality of its officials or its ministers. The issue just got shelved.
