At last it seems that Home Secretary David Blunkett has hit on an imaginative approach to the issue of the integration of immigrants into the wider community. The recommendations in Sir Bernard Crick's report to the Home Office should be widely welcomed.

The key to the importance of the report is the way it focuses not on the concept of multiculturalism but on the notion of values which should be shared by both indigenous and immigrant communities.

No-one who chooses to come to this country, either to settle or as a refugee or asylum seeker, can challenge the idea that they should wish to take part fully in the society in which they have opted to live.

The notion of citizenship is something that applies equally to everyone who wants to be British, whether they were born here or have come to live here. It is also something that can and should be taught to every child in every school to ensure that they have a proper understanding of our nation's history and social values.

And we have long argued in this newspaper that the key to the success of the ethnic minorities is in the ability to speak the English language at the earliest possible stage.

It is vital that recommendations in the report are backed up with the resources to ensure that the problem of children arriving at schools at the age of four or five without a word of English, with all the extra burdens that places on their potential for future success, will disappear completely.