Charles Clarke was today unveiling plans for a 'commission on integration' after warnings from race watchdog Trevor Phillips that parts of Britain are 'sleepwalking toward apartheid.'

The Home Secretary was laying out the Government's proposals for a new advisory committee to research the extent of racial divisions in society and to develop practical ways to overcome barriers to integration.

Mr Clarke said he wants the commission to find ways of "engendering an increased sense of Britishness" inclusive of all communities, a shared sense of "cultural norms and behaviour", and new ways to tackle the inequalities that trap people into segregated lives.

Mr Clarke was giving his briefing to journalists in Downing Street this afternoon as Mr Phillips prepared to make a controversial speech on the 'ghettoisation' of Britain to Manchester's Council for Community Relations.

The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality is expected to build on comments widely reported at the weekend, arguing that Britain is fragmenting along racial faultlines with 'literal black holes into which no one goes without fear and trepidation and nobody escapes undamaged'.

He told the BBC today: "When things are calm and everyone's getting along we can live in passive co-existence. When we have moments of stress, recessions or national disasters, that's when communities start to turn on each other, blame each other. That's when the trouble starts."

Mr Phillips' concerns appear to be backed by crime statistics which show that race hate crimes soared by almost 600 per cent in London in the month after the July 7 bomb attacks with 269 offences motivated by religious hatred reported to the Metropolitan Police, as compared with in the same period last year.

He warned that the levels of segregation were now reaching those experienced in the US, where the faltering response to Hurricane Katrina has been widely blamed on the fact that many of its victims were poor and black.

Mr Phillips believes that segration begins at school, where children tend not to mix, and continue throughout all levels of society.

He said: "Young people are more likely to have exclusive circles of friends than older people. That can't be right. We can't have a situation where we school people to be strangers to each other.

"When you leave work you leave multi-ethnic Britain behind; the reason this is important is we are going in the wrong direction - this is fertile breeding ground for extremists.

"You can get to the point as they have in the US where things are so divided that there is no turning back.

"We've just become too complacent. We're better at this than the US and most of the other European countries but that doesn't mean the we have got it all sorted.

"One of the great tricks, one of the fantastic things, about Britishness is that it is an identity that allows people to be very different but we all share a certain language, we all share certain kinds of manners and we share the way we care for our children. These are things we have in common.

"Whatever we do in the way of dress, however we worship, there are certain things that if we are going to be a functioning society where people care for each other we have got to have in common."

Meanwhile, the tenth MOBO Awards, which celebrate music of black origin, was being held in London tonight. Lemar, a former contestant in Fame Academy, has five nominations and will compete with Joss Stone in the UK act of the year slot.

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