Blunkett comments provoke race row

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David Blunkett embroiled the Government in a damaging race row yesterday when he said children of asylum-seekers were "swamping" some British schools.

Downing Street distanced itself from the remark, but the Home Secretary refused to withdraw it in the face of heavy criticism from Labour MPs, MEPs, refugee groups and children's charities.

He had been defending the new Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, legislation that will create "accommodation centres" for refugee families instead of placing them in communities.

But Mr Blunkett came under further fire last night when he told the House of Commons that a 78-year-old woman had been mugged for £60 by three asylum-seekers in his Sheffield constituency. Claude Moraes, a leading Labour MEP, also led a chorus of criticism against the Government's central claim that its hardline stance on asylum and immigration was an attempt to undermine the far right.

More than 50 Labour MPs signed a Commons motion attacking the Bill's key proposal to deny refugee children the right to attend mainstream schools or nurseries. Mr Blunkett triggered outrage yesterday when he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Whilst they're going through the process, the children will be educated on the site, which will be open. People will be able to come and go, but, importantly, not swamping the local school." The former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was criticised in 1978 when she said after a riot in Wolverhampton that the public were "really afraid that this country might be swamped by people of a different culture".

In the Commons, Mr Blunkett said that he would use the word "overwhelmed" in future, but refused to withdraw his earlier remark. He said he had not used "deliberately emotive language" and was talking about certain schools and GPs who were facing severe problems with the influx of asylum-seekers.

Mr Blunkett's aides said he would not bow to "political correctness", but Labour MPs said they were just as worried about the Government's overall strategy of claiming it was tough on asylum to outmanoeuvre the British National Party. Yesterday was the day Tony Blair urged voters across Europe to reject the "repellent" policies represented by Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France.

Mr Blunkett offered concessions to his critics, agreeing to a proposal by the Refugee Council to reduce the size of one pilot accommodation centre and pledging that no one would spend more than six months in institutions.

But the Labour backbencher Diane Abbott was scathing on his use of the word "swamping". She said: "We are talking about children here, not raw sewage." She also suggested the Bill's treatment of asylum-seekers was similar to the "separate but equal" rhetoric used to segregate blacks and whites in the deep South of the United States in the Sixties.

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokes-man, said Mr Blunkett had made a mistake. He added: "If suddenly a housing estate is built in a village and a large number of extra children come, you don't describe those children as swamping the village school."

Among the measures in the Bill, the maximum jail term for people convicted of harbouring illegal immigrants will rise from six months to 14 years. And the 1951 Refugee Convention protection will be denied to those found guilty of a serious crime and jailed for more than two years.