Badenoch: Let bosses ban burkas in the workplace

Telegraph

5 hours ago

A number of countries, including France, have banned the burka.
But Mrs Badenoch said: 'France has a ban and they have worse problems than we do in this country on integration. So banning the burka clearly is not the thing that's going to fix things.'
British law leaves it to individual employers to set their own rules around dress codes.
However, they could face legal challenges under equality and human rights laws if they were to tell staff to remove burkas or niqabs, on the grounds that they were discriminating against a religious belief.
An organisation would have to demonstrate its ban was 'proportionate' and for a 'legitimate aim', such as ensuring health and safety or enabling effective communication.
The main UK case law comes from 2007, when a bilingual support worker at a school in Dewsbury claimed constructive dismissal after she was refused permission to wear a niqab.
An employment tribunal sided with the school, which had argued the face covering would impede communication with her pupils, finding that there was no discrimination.
In her interview, Mrs Badenoch also fired a warning shot to would-be liberal rebels within the Tories who might oppose the commission she has set up examining the ECHR.
The Lawfare Commission is looking into how Britain could leave the convention and will report its findings by the party conference in October.
The question of whether to quit the ECHR has proved a divisive one within the party, with moderate Conservatives warning it could lead to a schism.
'I've moved a little bit on digital identity'
Mrs Badenoch said she is ready to block any candidates from standing for the party at a future election if they refuse to support her on the issue.
'If we make that decision that we have to leave the ECHR, then that will be a condition of standing for Parliament under the Tory banner.
'I'm afraid anybody who disagrees with that policy cannot and should not stand for Parliament as a Conservative MP.'
Mrs Badenoch also revealed that she is open to the introduction of digital ID cards if they would help clamp down on illegal migration.
The Government confirmed it is considering the proposals, published by the Tony Blair Institute, to crack down on visa overstaying and the black market.
Shortly after winning last summer's election, ministers had ruled out such an approach.
Mrs Badenoch said: 'I've actually moved a little bit on digital identity, mainly because every other company seems to have so many of our details.
'Google, the supermarkets, they all know so much about us, even more than the Government. If this is something that will help us solve other problems, then yes.
'We're not here just to oppose every single thing the government does, we want them to have good ideas. If they can show us that this is a good idea, then I think we'll support them.'
'We cannot leave the security of our country by the side because we're trying to save a few pennies'
If you want evidence that Kemi Badenoch is up for the fight against her critics, then look no further than the venue she chose for her speech on Friday.
The Tory leader was flanked by no fewer than six Union flags as she took to the podium at the Royal United Services Institute, a prestigious defence think tank founded by the Duke of Wellington.
During a 21-minute address, she railed against the ECHR and its Labour defenders, warning 'Britain is being mugged' by activist lawyers and judges.
The speech followed a bruising six weeks for the Tories, culminating in Thursday night's rout at the Hamilton by-election, which has left some internal critics asking whether it is time for Mrs Badenoch to meet her Waterloo.
But as we meet across a large table, on which the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet was signed at the end of World War One, there is no sign that she is preparing to wave the white flag.
Instead, the Tory leader channels the Iron Duke's uncompromising stance as she uses our interview to lay down the law to the liberal wing of her party.
'If we make that decision that we have to leave the ECHR, then that will be a condition of standing for Parliament under the Tory banner,' she insists.
'I'm afraid anybody who disagrees with that policy cannot and should not stand for Parliament as a Conservative MP.'
'We've tried reform and we end up messing around'
It is a bold proclamation from Mrs Badenoch on an issue which has split her party for years and frequently prompted apocalyptic warnings that leaving could cause a permanent schism.
Like all other recent Tory leaders, she has been pulled between its Left wing, for which adherence to international law is an article of faith, and the Right, which is pressuring her to match Reform UK, which has already pledged to quit the ECHR.
She has now firmly nailed her colours to the mast, announcing on Friday that she now sees no other way to regain control of migration and restore law and order than to quit the convention.
What is her message to the moderates, who want to see Britain work with other countries to secure changes to the 75-year-old treaty?
'We've tried reform and we end up messing around,' she says. 'Reform also takes years, and this problem is getting worse every single day. On Saturday, we saw 1,200 people come over.
'All of that is costing the British taxpayer money. There are people out there worried about the cost of living crisis. They're deciding to choose between heating and eating, and then they've got to pay for somebody else to stay in a B&B. That's not right.'
Conservative HQ will hope such muscular rhetoric can help the party stem the flow of support to poll-topping Reform, a subject which dominated the media Q&A session that followed Mrs Badenoch's speech.
She admits that she must do better to win back millions of centre-Right voters who have been attracted by its offer, but also urges critics within her party to hold their nerve with an election still almost four years away.
We are meeting less than 48 hours after Nigel Farage suffered a major blow with the shock resignation of Zia Yusuf, the Reform chairman who rejoined the party on Saturday night. His initial departure left fresh questions about Mr Farage's ability to keep the upstart outfit united and focused on victory.
'What we're seeing is what we've always seen with Nigel Farage,' the Tory leader said. 'He's left a wake of broken parties and very disgruntled people behind.
'Rupert Lowe, who was their best parliamentary performer, said that Nigel Farage should never be prime minister. These are the people who have been in the room with him. What do they know that the rest of us don't?'
'We are in a bad way, growth is disappearing'
What about the oft-floated idea of an electoral pact, which reared its head again last week following the Hamilton by-election, which a combined Tory-Reform candidate would have won instead of Labour?
It is an emphatic no. 'There are many Conservative voters who do not want Nigel Farage. So talking about a coalition means that we would lose those people.
'When I hear people talk about the polling and what's going on there, I just tell them that there's no election today. It doesn't matter whether protest parties or challenger parties are doing well, we've got four more years of this. What kind of country are we going to have left when Labour is done with it?'
Much of the answer to that question could be determined by Rachel Reeves this week when she delivers her long-awaited spending review, which is expected to herald heavy cuts for unprotected departments.
The NHS will once more get a bumper, inflation-busting settlement, while billions more will also be set aside to boost the defence budget, given the growing global threat.
Mrs Badenoch says that is the wrong approach and that, after decades of huge funding increases, including under the Tories, the problems with the health service are no longer about money.
'It is absolutely not sustainable to just keep spending more and more money on it and taxing the people who are generating the money,' she warns.
'We are in a bad way, growth is disappearing. All they're doing is carving out a fixed pie – in fact, a shrinking pie – and then trying to give more to the NHS, having to make cuts elsewhere.'
'Many politicians are not brave'
The inevitable result is that, once again, other departments will lose out. They include ministries on the front line of delivering Labour's manifesto promises, with even Border Force facing substantial cuts, despite Sir Keir Starmer's promise to crack down on illegal migration.
'That cannot possibly be true,' Mrs Badenoch gasps when I put it to her. 'It will show that they're a party that does not care about law and order.
'If you cut back on Border Force, you're going to end up spending billions more on asylum seekers staying in hotels. It is a completely false economy.
'We cannot leave one of the most important issues of our time, the security of our country, by the side because we're trying to save a few pennies.'
She is clear that, were she the one in Downing Street, the savings would be coming from the welfare budget, something which Labour is struggling to achieve amid a backbench revolt.
'They're talking about increasing child benefits, that's not what the country needs right now. They're giving free school meals to many more middle-class children. They should stop doing that and fund the police, fund Border Force.'
Up until last summer's Tory defeat, Mrs Badenoch, who was first elected to Parliament in 2017, had only known life in power and the trappings of ministerial office.
She served in four junior posts across three different departments before becoming International Trade Secretary and then, when that job was abolished, business secretary.
Now she has seen six months on the other side of the fence, I hope she can help answer one of the most perennially puzzling questions in politics. Just what is it that happens to politicians when they enter office?
Why is it that the same people who can clearly articulate voters' concerns whilst in opposition – the anger at dirty and dangerous streets, unchecked anti-social behaviour, increasingly scarce bin collections – immediately lose interest in those things as soon as they get their feet behind a Whitehall desk?
'It's a very interesting thing,' she muses. 'Many politicians are not brave and many politicians come in to do easy things, not difficult things. They think many of the things that they promise at election are going to be easy, and then when it starts to get difficult, they want to show that they're doing something.
'International summits look like you're doing something. You're taking pictures, it's very performative, but it is rare that you're actually shifting the dial. So that they're trying to look busy because they either don't know how to fix a problem or they're too scared to.'
'I will have a fight if a fight is necessary'
On top of that, she explains, life can be made difficult for those in government who try to take a stance on controversial or difficult topics.
'When I was talking about all of the children taking puberty blockers and being sterilised, I had so much opprobrium, people saying 'why are you talking about this? Just leave it alone. Oh, you're just doing this anti-woke thing. Just talk about the economy'.
'So there's pressure from your peers as well, to just keep your head down and take nice pictures. That's not something I've ever believed in. When I see something wrong, I want to deal with it, and I will have a fight if a fight is necessary.'
Mrs Badenoch blames this risk-averse approach to problem solving for the state of the economy, which is the root of the 'very visual decline' that Britons increasingly see around them every day.
She also subscribes to the 'broken windows theory', which states that when the police turn a blind eye to low-level offending such as anti-social behaviour and shoplifting, it allows a rot to set in which quickly spreads through society.
The Tory leader laments both a lack of official enforcement by the police and also social enforcement by ordinary citizens, who she says are now too afraid to step in and stop bad behaviour for fear of violence or online ridicule.
'So much that people thought was low level just isn't done any more. I've spoken to security guards in supermarkets who say if someone comes in to shoplift, they're just going to leave them, because when they catch them, they are then accused of assault.
'Once upon a time, if somebody was putting their feet on seats or behaving anti-socially on a train, other people in the carriage would stand up. Now people are worried about getting stabbed or being videoed on social media and it going viral.
'So there's a chilling effect. Enforcement is dying not just from the state, but also social enforcement. We have to tackle both those things.'
'I will tell the truth, I'm always direct'
Mrs Badenoch says she has told Robert Jenrick, her high-profile shadow justice secretary, to 'just go hell for leather on this stuff'. He has made a string of high-profile videos, most notably last month when he confronted fare dodgers on the London Underground.
'One of the other things that happens is that if people see that someone gets away with it, then others are encouraged to try it,' she says. 'Once you start normalising things, people who probably would never steal a sausage roll from Greggs then think 'well, I'll have that because everybody else is doing it'. So there's a domino effect that needs to be arrested.'
The mention of Mr Jenrick brings us back to the question of her leadership, with some mutterings within the party that the Tories would have been performing better in the polls had they picked him over her last November.
Her response to those briefers is as uncompromising as that to the left wing of her party. 'Anonymous briefings for me are always from cowards,' she hits back.
'Many of them are people who have had issues, scandals, problems, been sacked, and they know what sort of person I am. They know that I'm somebody who's a straight shooter, I'm not giving people jobs and favours.
'I'm not somebody who will flatter. I will tell the truth, I'm always direct, and many people don't like that. So I know that they will brief. It's like a sailor complaining about the sea.'