Dominic Grieve's comments on British Pakistanis branded offensive
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Version 0 of 1. The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, has been accused of offensive and ill-advised comments after warning of corruption in the British Pakistani community. The government's senior legal adviser claimed some immigrants came from communities where corruption was endemic and added that he was referring mainly to the Pakistani community. His comments have been condemned by members of all three main political parties, including the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps. Sajjad Karim, a Conservative MEP, said Grieve's comments were offensive. Karim told the BBC: "As a member of the British Pakistani community myself, I found these comments to be offensive, divisive. "I do think they were ill-advised and I'm afraid the very general way in which Dominic is trying to make the points that he is making will have the net effect of being seen as purely populist in nature." Khalid Mahmood, a Pakistan-born Labour MP, said Grieve's comments were designed to "divide and conquer". The MP for Birmingham Perry Barr said: "This is the law officer who's made this statement and I think the prime minister now needs to make clear whether this is his understanding of what's going on." Liberal Democrat Qassim Afzal, chairman of the party's Friends of Pakistan group, pointed to what he called Grieve's "loose language". "I'm profoundly disturbed at a statement from such a senior Conservative MP against the British Pakistani community," he told BBC Radio 5 Live. Karim said it was wrong for any politician to generalise about any community in order to increase their profile. "If Dominic has got any individual specific points he wants to make in relation to voter fraud or anything of that nature that's quite a separate issue and can be looked at," he said. "But to try and generalise in this way and to paint all British Pakistani community members in a certain light, I'm afraid that is simply something that cannot be ignored and it is certainly not something that the British public at large will accept from Dominic at all." Shapps said it was wrong to pin corruption on any single community. He told the BBC that the Pakistani community has "done an awful lot to work in this country and actually is a well-respected, established community that I think has lent a lot to Britain". He added: "I don't agree that pinpointing one community over another is the right thing to do. Actually corruption is something which, wherever it is, this government wants to root it out … but we certainly don't want to pin that on any particular communities." Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said that the single incident that the attorney general had mentioned was dealt with by the courts and was not evidence of endemic corruption."I think the attorney general should consider his comments again and either withdraw them or apologise for them," he said. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |