Reform UK is proposing to ban the burka and all face coverings in public to aid integration and safety, Zia Yusuf, the party’s “Shadow” Home Secretary, announced today. The Telegraph has more.

Zia Yusuf, the party’s new “Shadow” Home Secretary, said on Monday that legislation banning all face coverings in public would aid integration by ethnic communities and help the public feel safe.

Answering questions after his first major speech in the post in Dover, he said it was “ridiculous” that in an era of mass CCTV people could opt out of surveillance by wearing face coverings. Nigel Farage, who was alongside him, backed the proposal.

Yusuf quit as chairman of Reform last June after a dispute about the party’s handling of its position on the burka.

He had suggested it was “dumb” of Reform’s then newest MP, Sarah Pochin, to ask Sir Keir Starmer if he would ban the burka when it was not party policy at that point.

Asked about his views on Monday, Yusuf said: “I personally support a ban on all face coverings. So that’s actually a piece of legislation that has multiple bonuses to it, because it’s going to aid integration and help people feel safe.

“If you’re walking down a pavement and someone is walking in the opposite direction towards you at dusk, and they are wearing a hoodie and a balaclava, or worse, you generally cross the road.

“In this era of massive CCTV per capita in London, or any city in the world, the people who are able to opt out of that surveillance, ridiculously, are the people who wear those face coverings.”

Farage said he had recently been at an event in Newcastle when a mob wearing Antifa face masks turned up and started smashing windows. “We’ve seen this pattern of behaviour again and again, and again makes it difficult, virtually impossible, for police to identify them,” he said. “I believe that is wrong.”

He also referred to a “political murder” in Lyon, France, where masked and hooded men kicked a French nationalist student to death on February 12th.

“I don’t want us going down that road,” he said. “I think face coverings in public are problematic for many, many reasons, not just religious ones.”

Last week, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary who has defected to Reform and is now its “Shadow” Education Secretary, said she supported a ban on the burka and niqab in public because she claimed it undermined attempts to foster integration by communities.

Read More: Reform Pledges to Ban the Burka – and All Face Coverings