If you’re ever in doubt whether British people are still interested in big issues, start a debate about immigration. You can pick your venue – a pub, down the shops, or at the school gate. Your audience won’t need much warming up.

People want big changes to protect Britain’s borders and to prevent illegal immigration in the first place. And there’s an insistence that we hold newcomers to account if they break the rules, deporting rule-breakers where necessary.

But people want a compassionate system too, which honours the promises we must keep to those who need our protection – like the Iraqi interpreters or children or victims of trafficking.

We have got the message. This year sees the biggest ever shake-up to Britain’s border security. Every month, the public will be able to see progress on our ten-point plan for 2008.

But we want to go further still. Because I don’t think it’s enough to change the way newcomers earn their right to come. We have to look again at how people earn the right to stay. This is a big question. The only way to really understand our British identity is to talk to the people who know. Lots of them.

Last autumn, I travelled all over Britain talking to hundreds of people about just what do newcomers need to do these days to become part of the family in modern Britain? I have to say that what I’ve heard was British reason at its finest.

Sophisticated, intelligent views and a profound sense of fairness and tolerance for a Britain in which we live and let live and actually try a bit harder to be a bit more welcoming, and a bit less shy about saying hello. Britain is not anti-foreigner. As I have said before, we are not a nation of Alf Garnetts. In fact, we want a different kind of welcome in the future. Bluntly, people are up for doing a little more themselves – if government or council would do a little less.

Everywhere I went I heard people say ‘we bend over backwards’ to be accommodating. And what people mean is they don’t want us to sacrifice national traditions because we’re worried about giving offence. We hold our habits dear. We’d rather do more personally to offer a hand of friendship or a friendly word about anything and everything from the Queen, to queuing, to coming round for a cup of tea.

It’s funny. Abroad, we’re renowned for our cool reserve. But at home, what I heard was a country that wants to do more to make the British welcome warm and personal. In every place I stopped I heard people who wanted to volunteer to be a ‘buddy’ or a ‘mentor’ for someone who had a lot to give, but who might be feeling lost. But earning a stay in Britain is not a one way street. On the contrary. I heard a clear and simple sense of what we’re looking for from newcomers. And it’s not over the top. But the deal has to work both ways. So what do we want to see?

Top of the list – by a mile – was command of the English language. It didn’t matter whether people raised their voices in Estuary English like me, or Scouse, Geordie or Scots. Speaking English is seen as first base; the basic thing that newcomers must master if they want to be part of Britain.

And people have lots of ideas about how we can deliver the help. Whether it’s less translation, or employers doing their bit for staff, or British people volunteering to be ‘buddies’, or schools helping new kids and their parents. Whatever it takes, English was simply seen as the key to the kind of integrated society we want to live in.

Second – and not far behind – we want newcomers to pay their taxes just like we do. But we’re not in favour of special rights for the rich. I asked people whether successful migrants – like high earning footballers or surgeons – should get ahead faster. I got a pretty blunt answer. Treat everyone the same. Just make sure no-one’s dodging their dues.

Third, and most basic of all, was obeying the rule of law. British law. All of us have the odd moan about British justice. About judges and decisions we don’t like. But whatever the rule book says, we want to see it followed – with penalties for those that don’t. So when an offence is serious, I’m afraid we do want to show newcomers the exit door.

These are the ideas – along with scores of others – that I heard all over Britain and that we need now to put to good use. So we’ll be bringing forward new laws to modernize our outdated immigration system before the summer. Not only will we strengthen our immigration system but we will strengthen our proud way of life in this country too.

I hope you’ll see these values – our values – centre-stage.