For a long time it was impossible to have a serious conversation about immigration into Britain without being accused of racism. This wasn’t just over-sensitivity by the political correctness police - it was because many attempts to raise the issue did indeed have at least undertones based on race.

But discussion of the impact of immigration by councils who are responsible for working with those who need help when they arrive in this country seems, along with other factors, have to helped to change this - for example in today’s story about the difficulty of counting immigrants.

The Councils concerned have been quite clear that they are not opposed to immigration, and seem to have a genuine sense of the causes of immigration and the benefits it brings. They simply think the processes for counting them and subsequently assisting them, are inadequate.

This is an extremely welcome change - because what sort of immigration we want, and how we manage it, has become an extremely important issue and as a country we need, without racism, to be able to discuss it.

The issue is a real one for local authorities and they are right to raise it. However conceivably it is not a coincidence that the man fronting the current campaign, for example representing it on the Today programme this morning, is Sir Simon Milton, the leader of Westminster Council. Sir Simon is currently campaigning for the leadership of the Conservative group at the Local Government Association (LGA) and therefore to be Chairman of the LGA and I don’t suppose showing that he can front a campaign of this kind will have done his chances any harm…