A philosopher sacked from his role as a housing adviser over comments in a magazine interview has received an apology from the government.

Sir Roger Scruton was fired from his role in April following the publication of an interview he had given to the New Statesman.

He was reported as saying that China was "creating robots of their own people".

But the magazine later clarified that his criticism was referring to the restrictive regime of the country's Communist Party, rather than China's citizens.

Sir Roger also referred to a "Soros empire" in Hungary - a reference to Jewish billionaire George Soros.


However, the New Statesman did not include the rest of his statement that "it's not necessarily an empire of Jews; that's such nonsense".

Sir Roger repeated his assertion that Islamophobia was a propaganda word "invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue".

The New Statesman later apologised for the manner in which it had posted links on social media to the article in which "the views of Professor Scruton were not accurately represented in the tweets to his disadvantage".

Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary James Brokenshire said he regretted the way the decision to sack Sir Roger had been made.

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He is expected to meet with Sir Roger to see what role he would be willing to play on the building design agenda in the future.

The apology from Mr Brokenshire came in a letter published in The Spectator.

"As you know, I regret that the decision to remove you from your leadership role within the commission [the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission] was taken in the way that it was," Mr Brokenshire said.

"I am sorry - especially as it was based on a clearly partial report of your thoughts."

Mr Brokenshire added that he was looking at the next phase of the commission's work and "if you would be willing, I would like to invite you to meet to discuss this work and what part you might be prepared to play in advancing this important agenda which we both care about so much".

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The communities secretary has expressed regret over the circumstances of his dismissal.

"I believe that they are meeting in the coming days to have a discussion."