Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears today warned of the danger of “social apartheid” developing in Britain.
Blears said that community cohesion was under threat if immigration caused faith and ethnic groups to “totally dominate” neighbourhoods to the extent that members of other groups felt “alienated, insecure or unsafe.”
With the government proposing to build three million new homes in a bid to address the UK’s housing shortage, Blears stressed the need for those with different ethnic backgrounds and faith to be able to share the same neighbourhoods.
As a part of this, Blears spoke of how the new homes being built should be of mixed types and sizes to prevent greater division between the rich and the poor, and that “[W]e must not create tomorrow's sink estates, nor must we create walled enclaves for the rich.”
Fears of social apartheid developing in the UK have already been raised this year by the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, who talked of the existence of “no-go areas” in Britain.