LESSONS haven’t been learnt from the Burnley riots 15 years ago, according to a leading MP, who has said that the country is becoming more ‘ethnically segregated’.

Labour’s Chuka Umunna has said that not enough has been done following the violent disorder in the town and the subsequent Cantle report into its causes.

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In June 2001 riots broke out in Burnley arising from racial tensions between some of its white and Asian residents.

Homes were bombed, families attacked and 200-strong gangs clashed with police while The Duke of York pub was burnt down.

The former shadow business minister, who is the MP for Streatham, has criticised the immigration debate for focusing ‘almost exclusively on numbers, with too little attention paid to how we integrate people once they settle here’.

He repeated a warning he made in March that people may seek ‘Donald Trump style’ solutions if politicians did not act first.

He spoke ahead of a meeting of The All-Party Group on Social Inclusion, which he launched in March with a cross-party plan to improve social integration.

Mr Umunna, who chairs the group, warned that not enough action had been taken following violent disorder in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in 2001 and the report into their causes.

He said: “15 years after the Cantle Report, lessons have still to be learnt and cracks in our communities have continued to grow.

“In fact, Britain has become a more ethnically segregated as a nation as immigration has risen over the last decades.

“This illustrates the problem with a national debate on immigration that focuses almost exclusively on numbers, with too little attention paid to how we integrate people once they settle here.

“We’re now at a crossroads. If we don’t take action to bridge the divides in our communities, they will grow into gulfs and there is a real risk the British people could respond, not by seeking to solve our problems together, but by seeking to blame one another and look to ‘Donald Trump style’ solutions.”

Those due to address the group included Professor Ted Cantle, whose December 2001 report exposed a ‘polarisation’ in Britain that led to races leading parallel lives.

The former chief executive of Nottinghamshire City Council made 67 recommendations in areas such as housing, education, youth facilities and regeneration.

The group, whose members also include Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz, former Labour minister David Lammy and Tory peer Baroness Stroud, says it will also hear from Louise Casey, who is leading a review into integration for the government.