Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Philip Hollobone

Friday 28th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, but in the cases where those specialist police officers are covering their faces, it is for health and safety reasons. Where they are dealing with a terrorist incident and there is a likelihood that weapons could be deployed or explosives could go off, often a balaclava is required as a protective device for the police officer’s face. Everybody understands that. What would be completely unacceptable would be for ordinary beat officers—ordinary police officers whom the right hon. Gentleman, I and other Members see every day of the week—to wear full-face balaclavas.

This parallel between balaclava-wearing and the wearing of full-face veils first struck me when I took my children to a local park. I was sitting in the children’s playground watching my children playing, and this Muslim woman wearing a full-face veil came across the playground with her children and her husband, I suppose, as well. I thought to myself, here I am, sitting in a children’s playground in the Kettering constituency in the middle of England, and here is a woman who does not want anyone else to look at her. I thought to myself that at a very basic level, this is discourtesy. Why would anyone want to hide their identity from everyone else?

I thought, “Well, maybe it is a religious requirement.” Then I found out that it is not a religious requirement for a woman to cover her face, and I wondered how I would feel if, instead of the woman covering her face, it was her husband next to her who was wearing a full-face balaclava? How would that make me feel? Of course it would make me feel very concerned indeed about why a man was walking across a children’s playground wearing a balaclava. I asked myself what I would do about it? I would tell somebody in the park security department that there was a man wandering about wearing a full-face balaclava in a children’s playground.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East is definitely pulling a quizzical face at me, and that is fine. He is entitled to do that, and I can see him doing it because he is not wearing a veil, but perhaps he does not understand that it raises real concerns that individuals can go around covering their faces.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The other Member for Leicester was also looking askance at the hon. Gentleman, and I am very surprised that he finds the wearing of the veil so discourteous. In the parks in Leicester or even the soft play area on Evington Valley road where I often take my children, we often see women wearing the niqab and it does not offend me in any way, but if I were to see a gentleman wearing a balaclava, I would of course be concerned because a balaclava is not religious dress and it is out of the ordinary.

[Mr Hollobone]

It is not a religious requirement in Islam for a woman to cover her face.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman is right. There are different interpretations of the Koran. None of us here are Islamic scholars so it is not for us to give our judgment on that, but if these women choose to interpret the Koran as asking them to wear the niqab and the veil, who are we to criticise them for it?

[Mr Hollobone]

We are parliamentarians standing up for and speaking on behalf our constituents, who are concerned about these things. I do not think it helps the integration of communities in a multicultural British society when an increasingly large number of people, mainly women, go around covering their faces. That cannot promote community cohesion on any level. Do we really want to live in a Britain where a growing number of people are going around with their identities obscured? I do not, and I know that the majority of my constituents do not.