Robert Jenrick hints at Tory crackdown on immigration from countries with ‘alien cultures’ and ‘medieval attitudes’
Robert Jenrick has hinted at a Tory crackdown on immigration from countries with ‘alien cultures’ as the grooming gangs row rages.
Touring broadcast studios this morning, the shadow justice secretary insisted that government must be ‘very careful about who is coming into this country’.
The former Cabinet minister was grilled on his remarks last week that the ‘failed experiment’ of ‘mass immigration’ was behind the child sex abuse scandal.
Mr Jenrick said ‘millions of people’ have come into the UK in recent times and ‘some of these people hold backward attitudes to women’.
‘I think that it’s very difficult to successfully integrate the very large numbers of people who we have had coming into our country in recent years,’ he told the BBC.
Pressed on whether he thought former Cabinet minister Sajid Javid or London mayor Sadiq Khan – who have Pakistani heritage – held ‘medieval’ views, Mr Jenrick said: ‘I am saying some people do.’
Challenged if he wanted to stop immigration from countries with ‘alien cultures’, Mr Jenrick said: ‘I have always said and this is a point made by Kemi Badenoch, who’s the leader of my party, that not all cultures are equal.
‘We should be very careful about who is coming into this country and the scale of immigration.’
Asked again if immigration from such countries should be stopped, Mr Jenrick said ‘nobody frankly could say that integration is working well’.
He stressed that the Tories had committed to cutting inflows and having a ‘legally binding cap set by Parliament’.
The comments came as Keir Starmer scrambles to steady the ship today after brutal clashes with Elon Musk and fury at ‘smearing’ those calling for a national inquiry.
The PM fueled the backlash after swiping yesterday that politicians who want an overarching probe into the rape of thousands of white girls by gangs of predominantly Pakistani-origin men were ‘amplifying what the far-Right are saying’.
As it tries to quell the row, the government has announced that the law will be changed to make it mandatory for social workers, teachers, police and others working with children to report suspected sexual abuse.
The Tories are tabling a Commons amendment designed to force a vote on an inquiry.
However, Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired the previous independent inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, said this morning that ‘people should just get on with’ implementing its recommendations rather than holding another one.
