The UK should make places like Somerset take their fair share of migrants, a Danish minister who oversaw radical immigration reforms has suggested.
Kaare Dybvad Bek, Denmark’s employment minister who is part of the leading centre-left Social Democratic Party, told an event in Westminster on Monday that he found it “curious” that parts of southern England lacked diversity while the north of England was very diverse.
Mr Dybvad Bek said that the separation was “fundamentally wrong”, saying: “This is different from our [Danish] culture. I think also that there are some things that are fundamentally wrong – to segregate towns and cities. I think it is wrong also to give special rights based on ethnic or religious groups. I think that we need to have a society where everyone has the same rights”.
Referencing the rural detective series Midsomer Murders, which has been a big hit in Denmark, Mr Dybvad Bek added: “I’ve travelled around England with my family some years ago and I think it’s curious that when you go to Somerset, Dorset, these areas, there’s fundamentally no one with foreign backgrounds, but then you go to the North and there are majority with foreign backgrounds. As a Dane, I think that’s strange that you can have these big differences.
“Why don’t you make the people in Somerset also take part in this task for the nation?”
In power since 2019, the centre-left Social Democratic Party has moved to the right on immigration while introducing progressive policies on the climate and healthcare. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has tried to emulate their success with her own sweeping reforms to the asylum system and legal migration.
The government’s tough new rules on who gets to permanently settle in the UK mirror Denmark, which imposes conditions on benefit claimants, as well as financial and language restrictions.
Denmark has one of the toughest immigration systems in Europe and has also taken a tough approach to integration, with a law that allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of the residents have a “non-Western” background.
The so-called “Ghetto law” dates from before the Social Democrats were in power but Mr Dybvad Bek defended the radical approach in a conversation at the Policy Exchange think tank.
He said that “hostile” concrete estates were exacerbating people’s social problems and discouraging integration with Danish culture. He explained: “We have an estate in our third largest city, with around 9,000 people living in concrete buildings, with 77 per cent from non-Western countries, 52 per cent are out of work.
“This doesn’t give people who grow up there an opportunity to understand Danish society, to understand how you are living in Denmark, understand social norms, how to navigate our society. We want these areas to become more attractive to working and middle class families.”
He said that public housing was introduced into wealthy areas so that different parts of Denmark took on the “burden in integrating people”. He warned against people living in areas that “are detached from the city centres”.
Denmark has explored processing migrants’ asylum claims outside the country and has had talks with the Rwandan government, but Mr Dybvad Bek said that plans for an East-African asylum hub have been ruled out. He said that his party was focused on building these relationships with other European countries instead.
In a warning to left-wing parties across Europe, he said: “There is no other choice for people who want to representing working class communities…you need to also have democratic control of migration flows.” He said that the public’s concerns about immigration “needs to be solved by centre-right and centre-left, otherwise we will all be populist governments at some point”.
He added that 95 per cent of Denmark’s migrant returns are voluntary with cash grants given to failed asylum seekers to support them to leave.
