THE Government minister responsible for religious and racial communities has said she is glad that Home Secretary Theresa May had ditched the use of advertising vans carrying messages telling illegal immigrants to "go home or face arrest".
Faith and Communities Minister Baroness Warsi said that politicians should "think long and hard" before embarking on any policy that might create confusion between illegal immigrants and members of ethnic minority communities who are entitled to be in the UK.
Mrs May last week announced that the van campaign would not be rolled out nationwide after a pilot in London showed it was "too much of a blunt instrument".
Lady Warsi said: "I don't think it was a particularly positive experience and I'm glad that we won't be going back to it.
"I think it's always important for Government to be clear that all people who are part of this nation legally are absolutely welcome.
" If there's anything we do in our policies which doesn't entirely make clear that distinction - anything that causes that confusion, we should think long and hard about."
It emerged last week that posters advising illegal immigrants to "go home" may still be displayed in immigration centres, including in Glasgow, despite the Government's decision to scrap the vans.
The Home Office has said the two schemes are entirely separate.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article