I AM surprised that Burnley's Shahid Malik, who is a member of Labour's National Executive and the Commission for Racial Equality, should want Home Secretary David Blunkett to clarify his call for immigrants to learn English and for the ethnic community to do more to integrate.

Mr Blunkett said that ethnic groups have a duty to develop a sense of belonging to Britain rather than to opting to live in ghettos that replicate countries they left behind. And that practices such as forced marriages and female circumcision are unacceptable here.

If Mr Malik finds such opinions "disturbing," I am sure the majority of people -- even ones who disagree with them -- will find it refreshing that we have a Home Secretary brave enough to express them without fear of falling foul of the politically-correct liberals who would stifle much-needed debate over where multi-culturalism has got us and whether failure or unwillingness to integrate was a factor in the race riots that rocked Burnley, Bradford and Oldham last summer.

Strangely, Mr Malik believes that many racists and fascists will draw comfort from Mr Blunkett's comments and "view them as some sort of green light."

But does he not wonder whether the things Mr Blunkett complains of -- the decades of self-segregation by ethnic communities and the practice of forced marriage and genital mutilation in 21st-century Britain -- might be giving racists plenty of ammunition?