In an interview with BBC on Sunday, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said the party will push to ban the burqa and sharia courts (Islamic religious courts) in the United Kingdom.

In a surprise move last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election to be held on June 8 in order to bolster her position before going into two years of negotiations with the EU about Britain’s departure from the bloc.

Nuttall refused to admit the Eurosceptic party’s policies were targeting Muslims, but went on to say that there were no similar proposals to ban Jewish religious courts in the country. 

Nuttall, who had said in 2013 that UKIP would not seek a ban against burka, has now made a U-turn, calling for women wearing face-covering veils in public to be confronted.

“We have a heightened security risk at the moment and for CCTV to be effective, you need to see people’s faces. Because whether we like it or not in this country, there’s more CCTV per head than anywhere else on the planet,” he said. “We’re the most watched and for that to be effective, you need to see people’s faces.”

He added, “This isn’t an attack on specifically Muslims, it’s all about integration.”