Five years ago, when I first raised in the House of Commons the question of forced marriages, I was accused of "demonising" the Asian community and was met with a wall of denial from some quarters.

We now see Government guidelines for police and social workers to tackle forced marriages and an almost universal condemnation of the practise.

Three years ago I suggested that immigrants to the UK ought to have an understanding of English and was described as seeking "Linguistic Imperialism" by many.

It is strange how the debate has changed. We now hear the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, saying: "we need to assert that there is a core of Britishness." He also mentioned the need for a common language, recognition of gender equality and the rights of women.

I welcome Trevor Phillips's comments. It is about time that we can have an open, frank and honest debate about immigration without the fear of being accused of being a racist.

The reality is -- and everyone knows it -- that there is a problem with immigration in this country. Only those gullible enough to believe the vitriol published by some of the tabloid press would think that this is all attributable to incompetent Ministers who are in charge of a shambles of a system.

The reality is far more complex than that and, if we are genuine in our concern to solve the problems we face, then we need to understand the reasons.

But what is the problem? Perhaps we are being "swamped" by bogus asylum seekers, all hell bent on draining our benefits system and National Health Service and jumping to the front of any housing waiting lists.

If you believe that then, I am afraid, you have fallen hook line and sinker for the ill-informed and ignorant bile peddled by some of the media and extremists.

The reality is that last year saw just over 40,000 asylum applications to the UK. To put that into perspective, that represents just 0.08 per cent of the population of the UK.

Suddenly that great "avalanche" of applications or "swamping" of claims (or whatever other disaster metaphor the tabloids wish to employ) seems a little exaggerated.

The strange thing is that those people who use this language normally accuse the Government of spin!

Without a doubt a proportion of those seeking asylum will not be legitimate. Rather than fleeing violence or persecution, they will have travelled to the UK to seek a new life.

They are economic migrants. Their applications for asylum must be rejected and they must be removed to their country of origin or the first country of safety they passed through on their journey to the UK.

However, many asylum seekers are genuinely fleeing violence. They do not strap themselves to the bottom of trucks, hide themselves in cargo containers and run the risk of suffocation, just to claim £30 per week in vouchers!

This is an absolute myth. Why do they aim to reach the UK? For our inherent liberalism, fairness and law and order. The asylum seekers I have met in Keighley (one was a paediatrician, another an Iraqi nuclear scientist and a third an engineer) have endured tortuous journeys and are desperate to work and integrate into their host community.

These people are no threat, deserve our compassion and I welcome them with open arms.

The likelihood is that the vast majority of people in Keighley will never have met an asylum seeker (this is hardly surprising as there is only a handful here). However, like many people, I suspect that they simply lumped together the question of asylum with immigration. They are very different.

Many people see the problem to be one of British identity and way of life being under threat from migrants who have different cultural values, language and traditions and, rather than upholding British laws, they attempt to impose their own.

Those people who propose this argument are often vocal in making their point, but are shy at actually defining what the British identity is.

Does British mean white? How can it? The history of the British Empire (which, in itself, contributes to the British identity?) inevitably means that it encompasses every creed and colour.

Does one have to be a member of the Church of England to be British? Surely not. I have never heard anyone being denied their British identity as a result of their affinity to the Catholic Church based in Rome.

Perhaps it is our food that defines our identity. No one would deny that eating haggis is essentially Scottish and, therefore, a British tradition, as would be jellied eels, bread and dripping, black pudding or tripe and onions.

Yet more people in the UK will eat curry or a chop suey than any of those on a regular basis. Therefore, can we assume that they are now part of the "British way of life"? I think so.

Britain has always been the home for migrants -- the Vikings, the Normans, Irish, Ukranians, Italians, Indians, the list is endless.

It is this very history -- and the amalgamation of so many -- that now defines our identity and, for this reason, it always has been and always will be a fluid concept.

The definition of what is and what is not British will always change, and one of the greatest strengths of our identity is that we incorporate so much.

Although our identity is dynamic, we do have shared values and boundaries that, again, have developed over our long history.

Britain led the way to ban slavery in the 19th century. Our identity may be fluid but it would not, I believe, permit a return to slavery or child labour in the future.

An essential part of our identity is our fairness and democratic traditions that form the cornerstone of our values.

For those people who migrate to Britain then it is only fair that they accept and comply with those shared values. A migrant who uses corporal punishment against children in order to "encourage" them to learn more quickly must be rejected and stopped - it is an anathema to our whole way of life.

However, a migrant who is accepting of British values and can add something more in the spirit of those traditions should be warmly welcomed. Hence, given the very openness of the British identity, any migrant, when accepting of the laws and values, can comfortably maintain his/her own culture and traditions.

Why do I oppose forced marriages so vehemently? Because they are against every principle and sense of human decency that I hold.

The Suffragettes of the early 20th century did not fight and sacrifice their health and lives to win the right to vote, only for us to stand by in the 21st century and allow women to be used as a tool to overcome immigration legislation and satisfy economic migration.

I did not oppose apartheid in South Africa for so many years to simply watch our northern towns and cities adopt a strategy of self-segregation.

As part of my British identity I am welcoming of migrants. Moreover, this country has always needed migrant workers.

I would imagine that if we were to remove all the non-British-born workers from Airedale Hospital today, it would be unable to function tomorrow. If we were to remove all migrant workers from the various nursing homes in Keighley, there would be insufficient numbers of people to care for our elderly relatives.

This is, I believe, where the problem lies. On the one hand we need migration to maintain our economic prosperity and to fill the gaps in the labour market. On the other we need to be sure that those who wish to come to the UK are prepared to respect our laws, values and traditions and not seek to evade them by resorting to their own cultural norms that we, as a society, rejected in the past.

How do we achieve this? At the moment, marriage alone (on the proviso that the economic and housing criteria are met) is a sufficient qualification to merit a successful application for entry to the UK.

It does not matter whether the spouse is illiterate or a brain surgeon. What skills the migrant can bring to the UK and whether they are accepting of our laws and values are not considered.

The simple answer is, they should be. While I welcome migration, it must be "managed migration". I am sure that my critics would refer me to the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the "right to family life".

Everyone is, of course, entitled to marry who they like, but that does not entitle them to decide where they will live from one country to another.

And whose rights are we to protect? Those who abide by the law and values of the country or those who do not accept them?

Trevor Phillips said: "what we should be talking about is how we reach an integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there are some common values -- democracy rather than violence, the common currency of the English language, honouring the culture of these islands."

I wholeheartedly agree with him.