The archbishop of Canterbury has accused Ukip leader Nigel Farage of racism and agreed with the pope’s suggestion that Donald Trump is not a Christian.
Justin Welby told MPs in the home affairs select committee that he “utterly condemned” comments made by Farage at the weekend that sexual assaults by migrants were the “nuclear bomb” of the EU referendum.
The archbishop said Farage was guilty of “inexcusable pandering to people’s worries and prejudices, that is giving legitimisation to racism”. The Ukip leader was “accentuating [people’s] fear for political gain and that is absolutely unacceptable”, he added.
In response to questions by committee chair Keith Vaz, Welby said he agreed that Farage’s remarks were racist, adding “absolutely, without hesitation, I utterly condemn [them]”.
Later in the 90-minute session on immigration on Tuesday, Welby said he agreed with Pope Francis’s suggestion that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not a Christian” – an unmistakable reference to Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the US presidential election.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna pressed Welby further, asking if he also agreed that treating a whole faith group as suspect and banning them from entering a country was a Christian thing to do. “It’s certainly not a Christian thing to do, nor is it a rational thing to do,” Welby replied.
The archbishop would not be drawn on whether he would support the UK remaining a member of the EU in the 23 June referendum. Paul Butler, the bishop of Durham, also giving evidence to MPs, said he was “happy to go on the record as pro-remain”.
On immigration, Welby said Britain could absorb more people, although fears about the impact on housing, health and schools needed to be acknowledged and addressed.
“I fully accept there is a burden,” he said. “The answer is to provide significant extra resource to communities affected by the national government to strengthen infrastructure around education, health and housing.”
Such a move, he said, would “liberate [people’s] natural generosity. The causes of fear can be quite easily dispelled. The answer is not to say ‘no immigration’.”
There was a degree of nervousness in many communities, the archbishop added, and the answer was to “recognise fear and to address the causes of fear”.
Both Welby and Butler said the slow pace of resettling Syrian families in the UK was frustrating, but the authorities had to ensure safeguarding measures and adequate provision.
Welby said: “If I’m really honest, I don’t think Britain is full. We can take more people in but we have to think very, very hard about doing it.”
There was a limit to immigration, he acknowledged, but he said he did not know what that limit was. “The underlying issue for us as Christians is the dignity of the human person created by God. I don’t know the answer [to where the limit lies], but we’re not there yet.”
The UK’s resources were not infinite, he added, but, as the sixth biggest economy in the world, they were considerable.
The archbishop said Britain had a “shameful record” on antisemitism. “As a nation, we have to recognise that antisemitism has been the root and origin of most racist behaviour going back for the last thousand years in this country,” he said.
“We have a shameful record until very recently, historically. It bubbles to the surface very easily indeed. When we see it, it tells us there are strains and stresses in society. It is the canary in the mine.”
Welby also said that hate crime against Muslims had increased, fuelled by irrational fear that resulted in a high level of prejudice.
Integration of Britain’s diverse population was a huge challenge, he said. “It’s been the biggest failure of the Church of England over the last 40 or 50 years, in terms of how we’ve dealt with integration.” It was a “great cause of shame”, he added.