Here's a piece on a BBC religion page putting all this in context - with an illustration that rather ties in with something I wrote two posts back.

As Arnie pointed out, full veiling is relatively uncommon among Muslim women in Britain, and indeed in most Muslim countries. Trying to outlaw it would be a very clumsy, and I strongly suspect, a counterproductive, way of responding to it. I would anticipate that one effect could be that many Muslim women who currently dispense with headscarfs might decide to wear one in future as a gesture of defiance to a government that was seen as hostile.