Kemi Badenoch says bosses should be able to ban burqas in the workplace
8 June 2025, 07:47
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has backed calls for bosses to be able to ban burqas in the workplace.
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The Leader of Opposition said individual organisations should be able to dictate what their employees dress in, adding the workers should not be able to have any say in the matter.
“Organisations should be able to decide what their staff wear; it shouldn’t be something that people should be able to override,” she told The Telegraph.
She revealed how she holds “strong views about face coverings” and wants to prevent people from entering her constituency surgeries for wearing face veils.
The Tory leader said: “If you come into my constituency surgery, you have to remove your face covering, whether it’s a burqa or a balaclava.
“I’m not talking to people who are not going to show me their face, and I also believe that other people should have that control."
She also blasted sharia courts and first-cousin marriage as an “insidious” barrier to integration.
“If you were to ask me where you start with integration – sharia courts, all of this nonsense sectarianism, things like first-cousin marriage – there’s a whole heap of stuff that is far more insidious and that breeds more problems.
“My view is that people should be allowed to wear whatever they want, not what their husband is asking them to wear or what their community says that they should wear."
It comes as after Reform MP Sarah Pochin called on Sir Keir Starmer to ban the burqa in a controversial demand in the House of Commons earlier this week.
Her comments sparked a row over the Muslim headdress within the party. Reform UK immediately said it is not party policy.
On Thursday morning, its chairman Zia Yusuf said that he thought "it's dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn't do".
He later declared that his role within the party was no longer "a good use of my time", after leading Reform UK for just 11 months.
The 38-year-old businessman took to X to announce he would "hearby resign the office".
But just 48-hours later, he announced he would return to Reform, saying he felt "blindsided" by the move from Reform's newest MP, describing the controversy as an “internal miscommunication issue”.
