Cuts could be self-defeating

There will be many who will contend that Labour should not have made additional funds available to migrants and their families. However, this narrow-minded view is wrong and fails to take adequate account of the need to foster a culture of integration.

It is why Ministers need to re-consider their decision.

For, despite their prejudices, Labour's money was actually being used to help provided "personalised" learning in Yorkshire for newly-arrived migrant pupils so they could improve their grasp of the English language and, therefore, enhance their academic prospects.

It was also funding, for example, an information hub in Leeds where migrants could access details about key services, and without the need to trouble their local GP, school or housing office.

For once, this money was achieving tangible results – and helping to break down barriers between families from different ethnic backgrounds.

They are also services that are going to be essential in the years ahead if the community tensions of the past are to be avoided. The issue is how they will be funded, given the Government's assertion that it is now up to local authorities to decide how best to address the impact of immigration.

What Ministers clearly fail to realise, however, is that town hall budgets are already stretched to breaking point, and that this approach disproportionately punishes those councils that have an ethnically diverse population.

If alternative means of funding cannot be found, the likely consequence is there will be more migrants who are unable to speak English to an acceptable standard – and, therefore, more people who are unable, in adulthood, to hold down a job and make an economic contribution to society.

The priority, therefore, should be enhancing opportunities for

youngsters to acquire life and language skills – and not creating problems for the future by taking away services that are essential to building a successful, and harmonious, multi-cultural society.