A Conservative MP has been warned that he faces possible legal action if he carries out a promise to refuse to meet constituents wearing a burka.
Philip Hollobone, the MP for Kettering, which is in Northamptonshire in England, has been warned by lawyers for the left-liberal 'human rights' group Liberty that the Equality Act obliges him to avoid discrimination on such grounds.
Mr Hollobone is trying to bring in a Private Member's Bill to ban woman wearing the burka or niqab (veil) in public after the French parliament passed a similar law recently.
James Welch, the legal director of Liberty, said: "We have written to Mr Hollobone to advise him of the law as enacted by Parliament and feel confident that no well-advised Honorable Member would seek to breach it by meeting with constituents on a discrimatory basis."
In 2006, the then Labour cabinet minister and Blackburn MP, Jack Straw, said that he insisted Muslim women remove their veils when they visited him in his Lancashire constituency in order to aid communication between them.
The new Liberal-Conservative coalition government is expected to block Mr Hollobone's Private Member's Bill to ban the burka despite overwhelming public support for the move. Growing public concern over the increasing Islamisation of many of the UK's towns and cities is thought to be behind the support for the burka ban. |
