Shadow home secretary distances himself from Badenoch's burqa stance
The shadow home secretary said he holds meetings with constituents who wear the burqa, after Kemi Badenoch said she refuses to do so.
Chris Philp said the Tories would give 'serious thought' to rules on coverings after the party leader said employers ought to be free to ban their staff from wearing burqas.
Richard Tice, Reform UK's deputy leader, went further, saying the burqa should be banned entirely, although his party is not planning to make it policy.
The right wing of British politics has been roiled by debate about the right of Muslim women to cover their faces since Reform's newest MP, Sarah Pochin, used her first appearance at prime minister's questions to call for a burqa ban.
Zia Yusuf quit as party chairman soon after branding Pochin's decision to raise the issue 'dumb'. Yusuf, who is Muslim, has since returned to the party, stressing his frustration was about political communication rather than strong feelings about the burqa, telling The Sunday Times he would probably vote in favour of a ban.
Tice said that Britain should 'follow seven other nations across Europe that have already banned [burqas]', telling GB News: 'I'm very concerned about it in a Christian nation. And the truth is, how many of the women who wear a burqa wear it out of their own choice or because they're forced to? That's not how we do things in the United Kingdom.'
Badenoch said that 'people should be allowed to wear whatever they want, not what their husband is asking them to wear or what their community says that they should wear'.
She said that issues such as sharia courts and first-cousin marriage were 'far more insidious and that breeds more problems' than burqas, but said that she did not allow them at her meetings with constituents.
'If you come into my constituency surgery, you have to remove your face covering, whether it's a burqa or a balaclava,' she told The Sunday Telegraph.
'I'm not talking to people who are not going to show me their face, and I also believe that other people should have that control. Organisations should be able to decide what their staff wear; it shouldn't be something that people should be able to override.'
Philp appeared to take a different view, saying: 'I have in the past spoken to people, obviously, wearing a burqa; I mean I represent a London constituency.'
He said that it was 'definitely the case that employers should be allowed to decide whether their employees can be visible or not'.
While telling Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1 that face coverings were not 'necessarily the biggest issue facing our country right now', he said: 'There's a legitimate debate to have about the burqa. You've got, obviously, arguments about personal liberty and choice and freedom on one side, and arguments about causing divisions in society and the possibility of coercion on the other. That is a debate I think we as a country should be having.'
Speaking on GB News, Philp said the Tories were 'going to give a lot of serious thought' to the issue of the burqa, but stressed a ban was not a 'silver bullet'. He pointed to France's 'very serious problems with integration' despite banning the burqa.
He said: 'There is a legitimate debate to have there. You've got, obviously, on the one side, arguments about freedom of choice, personal liberty.
'On the other side, of course, you've got questions about social integration barriers being put up between people and obviously the possibility of coercion, either direct or indirect, as well. And look, I think that is a debate we need to have.'
Burqas emerged as a political issue almost 20 years ago after Labour's former home secretary Jack Straw said he asked women to remove them in constituency surgeries. He wrote in the Lancashire Telegraph in 2006 that he 'felt uncomfortable about talking to someone 'face to face' who I could not see', arguing that communication was 'of greater value' if he could someone's expression.
Describing the burqa as 'a visible statement of separation and of difference', he said that while he would oppose a ban, 'wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult'.
In 2010 Straw apologised for the remarks, saying he would not have made them if he knew they would cause such controversy, after he was criticised by a series of figures on the left.
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