Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick today became the latest British politician to claim he would ban the burqa in the UK. Appearing on a Ring Rob program on Talk, the Tory politician said he “probably would ban the burqa, adding that there are “basic values in this country and we should stand up and defend them”.

We can probably assume that it was an off-the-cuff remark intended to bolster Jenrick’s already robust credentials on immigration and integration. But it adds fuel to a growing debate about the status of a garment which many consider to be a powerful visual symbol of division.

In this context, the term “burqa” stands in for the niqab: a face-covering, usually black, worn in addition to a hijab, leaving a slit for the eyes. The burqa itself is a full-body covering, usually blue, with a mesh for the eyes and is generally associated with the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan. It remains relatively uncommon in Britain.

If it were banned in Britain, the country would follow France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland in outlawing the face veil. Last week, the Portuguese parliament approved a bill banning religious face veils in public. In the UK, Reform UK faced an internal row earlier this year when MP Sarah Pochin called for a burqa ban, only for then-Chairman Zia Yusuf to label the intervention “dumb”. Jenrick, however, clearly feels that it is among an array of legitimate policies which might be available to a future Tory government to foster integration.

Polling in recent years has demonstrated that a ban is supported by a plurality of British voters, who consider the sight of people with covered faces both alarming and a potential security threat. What’s more, many are concerned that the niqab is an affront to women’s rights, and regard it as an inhibition on Muslim women and a symbol of oppression.

But there is a question here about symptoms and causes. More than anything, in Britain, the decision to wear a niqab stands as a rejection of British culture, which many Muslims associate with binge drinking, promiscuity, and lack of devotion to the family. Wearing the veil signals piety, adherence to Islamic values, and that a woman places a higher value on her position within her own community than in mainstream British society.

Among certain Muslim communities in Britain and especially among Pakistani groups, visible rejection of British ideas about personal morality is a source of social enhancement, and can significantly improve a family’s status in terms of marriage options. While in some cases the decision is made by men, it is often women themselves who place the most value on these forms of respectability. Most powerfully, the decision to wear a niqab elevates the respectability of a young woman in the eyes of her mother-in-law, or to a potential mother-in-law. As such, it is something she will often be encouraged to do by her own mother.

This dynamic demonstrates the extent of the failed integration of some Muslim communities in Britain. We would hope to see immigrant communities trying to signal the extent of their assimilation into mainstream British society, as has happened with other waves of arrivals. By the time those communities reach the third or fourth generation in the UK, it should be almost effortless. Instead, social and religious forces seem to be putting the trend into reverse.

In this context, a burqa ban is more of a band-aid than a solution. Instead, the visible presence of face coverings in so many of our towns and cities should serve as a powerful reminder of how much work we have to do to reconcile very different ways of life. The fact that a community of people who have moved to this country should find it socially beneficial among themselves to publicly reject our ideas about morality and society ought to provoke deep concern. It isn’t so much that a burqa ban is a bad idea; it’s that it shouldn’t be necessary at all.

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Chris Bayliss is an independent consultant who works on energy infrastructure in the Middle East.

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