The former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in London tonight that outbreaks of modern antisemitism were "repulsive" and should not be ignored.

While he made no mention of recent incidents within the Labour party, he told the annual Board of Deputies dinner that "we have a responsibility to cross party loyalties, to cross religious faith lines, to cross ethnic backgrounds" to fight it.

He said the response to antisemitism "can't be to turn away. It must be to engage, not to ignore".

In doing so, "we make critical commitments. To highlight and expose the perpetrators and what they stand for. To fight and defeat their ideas".

Antisemitism, he stressed, "is not, and should not be, the Jewish community's fight alone. It is everyone's fight, everyone's responsibility".

The head of the International Rescue Committee devoted most of his remarks to the global crisis of refugees.

Linking the Pesach message of freedom to the "modern exodus" of those fleeing to Europe, he said that "the Jewish people know the story of fight only too well".