Migrants ‘need to learn English to be a full member of society’

The Communities Secretary admitted policy details had not yet been hammered out, but highlighted reforms made last year to cut translation services and boost spending on English classes.

But a senior Liberal Democrat source said the idea of cutting benefits to non-English speakers was a Tory idea not agreed by the coalition, and warned their partners should not “chase Ukip’s tail via the Sunday papers”.

Mr Pickles said: “Last year, I stopped translation inside the Department for Communities and Local Government and asked local authorities to do the same, but at the same time I increased the amount of money available to learn English and we have done a series of innovative programmes of trying to target particular groups who don’t speak English.

“We don’t know how this policy is going to be put out, but I would say this – if you’re on benefit or whether you’re in work, you can’t be a full member of British society unless you speak English.”

Meanwhile, a chaplain to the Queen tipped as a possible contender to be one of the first women bishops said immigration had made British people less emotionally cold and blamed “plain ignorance” for opposition to it.

The Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who became the first black female chaplain to the House of Commons, said the UK had changed since she arrived from her native Jamaica in 1979 when she found it “cold”.

Appearing on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, she was asked by host Kirsty Young if that “sense of British restraint” had been “broken down” by immigration, and said: “Oh yes and that’s one of the great things with regards to immigration.”