Home Secretary: UK public deserves 'rational' immigration debate » Central Government » 24dash.com

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has called for a "rational" debate on immigration to challenge the views of the far right British National Party.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Johnson acknowledged that Labour may have in the past avoided the issue and in doing so played into the hands of the the BNP.

"People think we have shied away from a debate on it. They may well be right," he said.

"My post bag is bigger on immigration than any other issue. It is a major public concern. The public deserves a rational debate on this, rather than what they sometimes get, which is at the extreme end of the scale."

Mr Johnson - who last week admitted successive governments, including this one, had been "maladroit" in their handling of the issue - said immigration had been good for Britain "culturally, socially and certainly economically".

But without a proper public debate, he warned that it left the door open for the BNP to make the running on the issue.

"Part of its attraction is that it is raising things that other political parties don't raise," he said.

"It would take the absence of a national debate as the green light to distort the debate. It has absolutely no inhibition about lying about these issues."

Nevertheless Mr Johnson made clear that he was still not prepared to share a public platform with the BNP to debate the matter.

"My view is still that I won't share a platform with a fascist. That has been my view for 59 years and I don't intend to change it," he said.

"I don't have to sit and debate with these people. It does not call the debate to a halt."

He still believed it had been a mistake to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to appear on BBC's Question Time - although he said he understood why Justice Secretary Jack Straw and the other panellists had agreed to take part.

"I think that the publicity gave the BNP exactly what it wanted," he said.

"I hope that people saw how inept Nick Griffin is as a politician. I hope they (the panellists) were right. But I fear they were wrong."