Shabana Mahmood

I think everyone across the House can agree and unite around the idea that it is important that everybody who comes to this country, makes it their home and chooses to raise their family here commits themselves to being the best of British. That is certainly my own experience as somebody whose parents came to this country in the late ’60s and then in the ’70s. Actually, the vast majority of our minority communities are very proud of being British. Every survey I have ever seen of minority communities that asks them to describe their Britishness finds a huge pride in Britishness and also in our Union Jack—our flag and symbol of our nation. There are obviously, though, some issues that we have to confront. There is a question to be asked here about this attacker who had all of the benefits. He came here as a small child and became a naturalised British citizen. He was still a minor when he became British, and he committed these attacks in his mid-30s. There is a question to ask about what went wrong in that period of his life, in those formative years, that made him do such an act. I will ensure that those wider lessons are learned, and I will never shy away from honest conversations about either integration or community cohesion in our country. But I also do not want it to be the case that we allow the actions of a minority to make us believe that our majority are not proud of being British, because my own experience and all the data show that the exact opposite is true.