Theresa May should speak out about the positive impacts of immigration, to counter the hostile narrative preventing integration, the police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire has said.
Speaking at the first citizens’ jury to examine the impact of the government’s plan to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees, Paddy Tipping criticised the “unhelpful and negative comments” made by senior government figures over immigration and Muslim communities. Tipping said he was concerned about the “increasingly hostile environment to new arrivals and indeed to established communities” in Nottinghamshire.
Hate crimes had gone up 11% over the last 12 months, he said. Since the Brexit vote, there had been an increase in reported incidents. The numbers were “relatively low” but they were under-reported, Tipping said. “There are real fears in the Muslim community that they are being picked upon,” said the commissioner. “Since 9/11, things have been getting worse. Some of the rhetoric from politicians around terrorism hasn’t helped.”
Tipping said that, in order to help those on the ground advance the integration of refugees and asylum seekers, May needed to be proactive. “The prime minister has been very good on stop-and-search, around recruitment and retention of black and ethnic minority officers,” he said. “She’s good on that but really she needs to say more about the positive impacts of immigration. We’ve created our own problems by telling people there are problems that can’t be sorted out. We can sort it but we need to tone down the rhetoric. We need to talk about successes.”
Speaking after the hearing, Tipping would not be drawn on individual ministers, but said: “You could run through a list of cabinet ministers who have said things about Muslim communities and about the increase in immigration that sets a negative tone. For those of us who want to build strong communities, that creates a hostile climate, a negative climate that makes it very difficult.”
Asked by Nottingham Citizens’ Commission on Sanctuary, a panel of community and faith leaders, what police were doing to increase trust and confidence among minority communities, Tipping said the percentage of black and minority ethnic (BME) police had increased in the last four years, to better reflect the wider community. Nottingham police force is 14% BME, with 26% of all cadets from BME communities, he said, while stop-and-search rates for Nottingham were the lowest in the country. About 35% of Nottingham’s 310,000 population are BME, according to the 2011 ONS census.
The commission was set up by Nottingham Citizens, a local branch of Citizens UK, a local alliance of civic society institutions, in response to what they said was a community-led desire to help refugees. It held its first hearing on Tuesday, as the archbishop of Canterbury and the Home Office launched a scheme to encourage members of the public, community and faith groups to sponsor refugee families settling in the UK.
Nottingham, one of the first places to resettle the first vulnerable Syrian refugees that came to the UK after Christmas, has been generally welcoming of refugees, with numerous civic agencies keen to help them integrate, the commission heard. The city has taken in 95 of the first 1,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled as part of David Cameron’s promise to take in 20,000 by 2020.
But there were community tensions, particularly in outlying villages, such as the former coal neighbourhood of Mansfield, where facilities have been badly hit by austerity measures. In nearby Brindsley, with a long history of rightwing activists, a banner was erected, proclaiming: “Refugees are not wanted in Brindsley.”
Tipping said police had good intelligence on rightwing groups, including the Nottingham Casual Infidels, the group investigated by police after reports of a negative Facebook post following the fatal shooting and stabbing of MP Jo Cox in June. Tipping reported low levels of racial tensions in the inner city, but in areas that were more isolated and fragmented, with fewer facilities. “We need to do more thinking,” he said.
The panel also heard from councillor David Mellen, of Nottingham city council, who echoed Tipping’s concerns. He said: “There aren’t the facilities in small market towns, in places like Mansfield. We need to do it in a way that doesn’t make people who are vulnerable more vulnerable.”
There were pressures on housing stock and on other services, the panel heard. Councillor Nicola Heaton, of Nottingham city council, who has portfolio for community services, said there was a formal “saturation zone” based on the number of asylum seekers in housing stock but there was pressure to exceed it.
Areas like Arboretum and Hyson Green, where G4S house refugees, because of cheap, large housing stock, presented “challenges in terms of services and also of community cohesion”. Heaton said tensions were not all race related, but stemmed from austerity and misunderstanding of local rules over rubbish collection, which could be addressed.
The chair of the Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum, Leo Keely, said he gets 300-400 people through the doors every week and “we get virtually no comments on hate crime”. He said: “We should be proud of how the city has responded over the years.”
Lydia Rye, senior organiser for Nottingham Citizens, said there had been a “clear call” from the community since the body of toddler Alan Kurdi was washed up in Turkey in September 2015, to do more for refugees. The commission, set up to address that, would produce a list of recommendations in October, she said.
“The challenge is how to support the community to do that meaningfully,” Rye said. “Families need to build a life and make friends. How do you support the 40-odd organisations to help do that? Especially when the public conversation at a national level is about making it harder?”
The commission’s first hearing, at Trent Vineyard church, in Notts, also heard from the Nottingham clinical commissioning group, the City of Sanctuary and, in a closed session, from G4S, the security company that houses refugees.
