Bishop Nazir-Ali's concern that the rapidity and scale of immigration, together with the policy of multiculturalism, threaten Britain's Christian heritage are echoed by the Church of England General Synod, a majority of which worries that large-scale immigration is "diluting the Christian nature of Britain".

It is not necessary to endorse all of Bishop Nazir-Ali's analysis to recognise that the scale and speed of immigration into Britain in recent years has indeed caused some serious social problems. Although those problems have long been at the top of voters' concerns, it has, until recently, been almost impossible to raise, let alone discuss, them in public: to do so risked being labelled "racist", a charge that has worked very effectively to shut down any further debate.

We believe that the root of the problems that have been caused, or at least exacerbated, by rapid mass immigration - including stresses and strains on the availability of publicly-funded goods, such as education, health and council housing - is less the scale and speed of immigration itself than the way Governments of all stripes have dealt with it. The policy of multiculturalism, which for decades has been the officially-sanctioned policy for immigrants, has actively worked against integrating new arrivals into British culture, traditions and values.

The model has not been the melting pot but the mosaic: instead of co-opting newcomers into the values of toleration, secular democracy and respect for the law as made by Parliament and interpreted by the judiciary, multiculturalism has encouraged immigrants to form their monocultural islands of belief and tradition, in which they reproduce their own values, regardless of whether they are inimical to the British way of doing things.

In 2008, it is not necessary to be Christian to enjoy the full liberties of the British subject (and it has not been for at least 150 years). Although it may be the result of a Christian heritage, the British way of doing things today has little to do with commitment to a specific religion: those of different faiths, whether Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or whatever, are of course full members of any British society that is worth having and preserving. What is required, however, is commitment to the democratic procedures by which law is made in Britain, and to the laws those procedures produce.

That is not a commitment that excludes much - but it does exclude the idea that all "man-made", as opposed to "God-made", law is illegitimate. So it excludes, for example, the narrow theocratic extremism of the Islamist sects that insist that only laws which derive from the Koran or Islamic tradition should be obeyed or enforced, and that they must be allowed to rule their own communities by Koranic law.

Multiculturalism allowed narrow theocratic extremism of that kind to flourish in Britain. The Government has finally realised that this was a mistake, and has promised new policies based around inculcating "British values". That is a huge improvement on multi-culturalism, which did not even insist that immigrants learn English. But it has yet to dismantle the enormous bureaucracy dedicated to promoting multiculturalism, or the jobs of the thousands of officials that depend on it.

Until it does so, separateness will continue to flourish - as will its potentially calamitous consequences for the integration of immigrants into Britain.

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