Cohesion ignored for far too long before summer riots, says ex-Tory Home Secretary

Community cohesion has been treated as a "second-tier" issue which governments only respond to when tensions spill over, a former Tory Home Secretary said.

Sir Sajid Javid warned that the root causes of divisions had been ignored for too long. The former MP, who was Home Secretary under Theresa May before becoming Boris Johnson's Chancellor, is heading up a new independent commission set up in the aftermath of last year's riots.

Brendan Cox, whose Labour MP wife Jo was murdered by a far-right thug in 2016, warned that community tensions are an "existential threat to democracy". It comes as the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion holds its first meeting, co-chaired by Sir Sajid.

The ex-minister said: “Successive governments have treated community and cohesion as second-tier issues — responding only when tensions spill over, and too often ignoring the root causes."

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His fellow co-chair, former Labour MP Jon Cruddas, said the group could be a " crucial step forward". He described cohesion as "one of the most pressing and persistently neglected issues facing our country".

In the autumn it will launch a 'national conversation' drawing in public opinions on how to bring communitites together.

Mr Cox said: “Declining community connection and growing division is an existential threat to democracy. It won’t be solved by more of the same - or by a single party or government.

"We will only see progress if we can forge both a shared vision of where we are going, and an effective roadmap of how to get there. That’s not an easy thing to do - especially not in the current climate - but it’s an extraordinary group of people who have committed to helping try.”

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