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Every year around 60,000 people apply to become British citizens. Immigration records will give us copious detail on things like who these people are, where they come from and what their general backgrounds are. But what we do not know is what they know about Britain, the country they wish to make their permanent home.
This very fact led the Home Secretary, David Blunkett to suggest recently that all future immigrants may be required to attend citizenship classes and English language lessons. Others say we should go further and insist that all aspiring citizens should be made to sit an American style citizenship test first. This would include a selection of questions on the country's history, constitution and laws.
But what questions should any equivalent British test ask? To find answers this programme gathered together a group of eminent people from a variety of backgrounds. From the world of politics we had the Labour MP, Barry Sheerman , who Chairs the Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills. He was joined by Historian Andrew Roberts, the Deputy Chairman of the Greater London Assembley, Trevor Philips, Zara Joseph of the British Muslim Council and Doctor Madsen Pirie of the right leaning think tank, The Adam Smith Institute.
Most agreed that those seeking British citizenship should be tested on their knowledge of Britain. So we asked our panel to agree on ten questions that aspiring citizens could be asked. To test them out we invited Today listeners to log on to this web site and see how many they could get right. Within three days more than 40,000 people had tried the test and more are continuing to do so.
