TONY BLAIR described the wearing of the veil by Muslim women as a “mark of separation” yesterday and backed a local education authority that suspended a Muslim teaching assistant for refusing to remove her veil during lessons.

The Prime Minister gave his strongest support for the line originally taken by Jack Straw, who disclosed that he asked Muslim women who visited his constituency office to remove their veils, as it emerged that ministers are to build on the debate to encourage greater integration by the Muslim community.

A Cabinet committee is to discuss ways of promoting closer harmony and deterring segregation. Ministers accept that it would be unwise to legislate on such a sensitive issue, but they are anxious to find ways of persuading the majority of the Muslim population, who they believe want to be integrated, to take on militants who are using the present controversies to try to create a “victim culture” in Muslim communities.

Ministers report that MPs whose constituencies have big Muslim populations are finding substantial support for Mr Straw, the Leader of the Commons, and for Phil Woolas, the Communities Minister, who called for the sacking of the teaching assistant Aishah Azmi.

Mr Blair said that every town, village and city was now discussing the issue. He could “see the reason” that Kirklees Council had suspended her.

Speaking at his monthly Downing Street press conference, he said that the question of school staff wearing the veil should be a matter for the education authority. “They should be allowed to take that decision,” he said, but added: “I do support the authority in the way that they have handled this.” Asked whether he specifically backed the teaching assistant’s suspension from Headfield Church of England Junior School in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, he said:

“I simply say that I back their handling of the case. I can see the reason why they came to the decision they did.”

Mr Blair said that the veil row was part of a bigger debate about the way that the Muslim community integrates into British society. “Difficult though these issues are, they need to be raised and confronted,” he said.

There was also a question, he said, about how Islam “comes to terms and is comfortable with” the modern world. “We have to deal with the debate,” he said. “People want to know that the Muslim community in particular, but actually all minority communities, have got the balance right between integration and multiculturalism.”

Mr Blair then echoed Mr Straw’s comment that the wearing of the veil was a visible statement of separation. “It is a mark of separation and that is why it makes other people from outside the community uncomfortable,” he said. “No one wants to say that people don’t have the right to do it. That is to take it too far, but I think we need to confront this issue about how we integrate people properly into our society.”

David Cameron blamed the policies of successive governments for divisions in society. Grants had been doled out not on the basis of need but on the basis of race and religion. “Those who kept quiet and got on with life got very little while those who made the most noise have often been given the most” he said.

Speaking to a Hindu forum in Watford, the Conservative leader said it was time to discard the failed policies of the past. “All of us — rich and poor, black and white, Hindu, Muslim, Jew and Christian — have got far more that unites us than divides us,” he said.

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