Migrants 'should be taught when to take bins out and queue' in order to integrate into Britain

Migrants should be taught when to take the bins out and how to queue in order to better integrate themselves into British society, according to the government's integration tsar. Dame Louise Casey told MPs Britain needs to be "less shy" in setting out rules for new arrivals in Britain in order to help them settle after rejecting claims integration in Britain needs to be a "two-way street".

Casey was speaking to the Communities and Local Government select committee following the release of her review into opportunity and integration last December, which aimed to looked at "not just about how well we get on with each other, but how well we all do compared to each other".

Following 18-months of evidence gathering, the review suggested immigrants to the UK should take an oath of British values in a bid to promote their integration into society and that cultural and religious practices in some communities are "not only holding some of our citizens back, but run contrary to British values and sometimes our laws".

Speaking to MPs on the committee about meeting a group of Eastern Europeans who had recently arrived in Sheffield, Casey said: "I thought it was interesting that they said that nobody had talked to them about our way of life here, about when to put rubbish out.

"Nobody told them to queue, nobody told them to be nice, all those sorts of things. We hadn't been on it and I think as part of the package that would be no bad thing. What is clear is we is that we ought to be more on integration, we should have been and we need to be."

Casey also rejected the idea that a community needs to play an equal part in helping migrants integrate into society upon arrival.

She said: "I don't think it is a two-way street. I think that's a sound bite that people like to say. I would say if we stick with the road analogy, integration is like a bloody big motorway and you have a slip road of people coming in from outside."

She added: "What you need to do is people in the middle in the motorway need to accommodate and be gentle and kind to people coming in from the outside lane, but we're all in the same direction and we're all heading the same direction.

"There is more give on one side and more take on the other and that's where we have successively made a mistake, which is where we've not been honest about that."