Urdu is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom. According to the 2011 census, 269,000 people (0.5% of UK residents) listed Urdu as their main language. Ethnologue reports the total number of Urdu-speakers in the UK at over 400,000.
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Challenges
Britain's Anglophone tradition and inheritance centralises English as the national lingua and vernacular. Radical opportunities exist however for the productive growth of minority Commonwealth migrant languages such as Urdu and Punjabi, particularly in curriculum-based education.
Use in politics
When Pakistani-origin Scottish MSP Bashir Ahmad was elected to the Scottish parliament in 2007, he took his oath in both English and Urdu.
References
Urdu in the United Kingdom Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA