Ukip pursues 'integration' with burka ban and FGM checks

Ukip has launched its "integration agenda", including a public ban on burkas, a commitment to eliminate sharia law and prosecutions for parents whose daughters suffer female genital mutilation (FGM).

Leader Paul Nuttall denied the string of policies aimed almost entirely at Muslims were designed to be divisive.

The Green Party attacked the agenda as "full-throttled Islamophobia".

Mr Nuttall, who is still yet to confirm if he will stand in June's election, said he believed Ukip was "10 years ahead of our time" on the issues.

He predicted the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats will be "where we are today at some point in the 2020s".

Ukip want the failure of an adult to report FGM to be made a specific offence as it called for girls from at-risk groups to be examined at school every year.

The party's women and equality spokesman Margot Parker said the Crown Prosecution Service should be required to work to a "presumption of prosecution" of any parent whose daughter has suffered FGM.

She also called for an expansion of hate crimes, saying if Pakistani men rape a white girl it should be treated as a "hate crime" as well as abuse.

ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand said the policies suggest former leader Nigel Farage's call for the party to promote "tougher" measures to "own" the immigration debate had taken effect.

The party had trailed its leading policy proposals on Sunday as Mr Nuttall called for a ban on face coverings in public.

He argued the move was necessary because of the heightened security threat and to promote social integration.

Launching the policy list in Westminster, Mr Nuttall said: "Today's message will be a message of positivity, it will not be about negativity.

"What we will say today is not designed to sow the seeds of division. It is about promoting integration in British society."

Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas quickly condemned the launch as an "assault on multiculturalism and an attack on Muslims".

She said: "Now that the referendum has passed Nuttall’s party is desperately scrabbling around for relevance and seem to have settled upon attacks on Muslims and fringe far-right politics as their new home."

Mr Nuttall's refusal to take questions at the integration policy event saw him pursued by journalists keen to learn about his own electoral ambitions.

The Ukip leader is expected to stand but will be keen to avoid a repeat of his defeat in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election in February.