BNP leader Nick Griffin

It has been revealed that the French National Front is to assist the BNP in their European election campaign.

Leader Front Nationale Jean-Marie Le Pen is to attend a fundraising dinner in the West Midlands on Saturday.

Speaking to the BBC on Wednesday, BNP leader Nick Griffin claimed that a "nationalist" presence in the European parliament would have an impact on immigration policy.

"MEPs who aren't in a bloc get very little chance to speak so at least we get a chance to put the nationalist point of view across," he said.

"When the liberal-left politicians all over Europe find they really have now got a nationalist alternative there at the heart of Europe then I think we will see the same thing that has happened in Holland in the past two years.

"Once liberal Holland has now got the toughest asylum policies in Europe - this isn't because the government there has had a change of heart, it's because they are scared of the nationalists."

The Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, Khalid Mahmood, said it was crucial for mainstream politicians to take on the BNP and expos them as "the party with no real politics other than disruption between communities".

But Liberal Democrat chairman Matthew Taylor warned against a knee-jerk reaction.

"Sometimes the panic button is being hit by other parties who have talked up the BNP," he said.

"That kind of publicity is the only basis on which they have won - we don't talk them up."