Robert Jenrick has called for asylum seekers to be detained in “camps” with facilities like “rudimentary prisons”, in an apparent attempt to outflank Reform with his anti-immigration rhetoric.
The shadow justice secretary told Tim Shipman at the Spectator of his hope for a “decade of net emigration” as Britain “now needs breathing space after this period of mad migration”.
Jenrick said “there’s a lot to welcome” in Nigel Farage’s immigration plan but criticised Reform for its proposals on housing asylum seekers.
“They should be detained in camps,” Jenrick said. “The facilities will need to be rudimentary prisons, not holiday camps. It’s not what Reform have suggested, which is cabins with a fence around them.”
He also attacked Reform for indicating that their measures would focus on deporting undocumented males rather than women and children. Farage rolled back on his initial pledge to deport “absolutely anyone” 24 hours after he unveiled his immigration measures last week.
Jenrick appeared to suggest the Conservative party should outflank Farage on immigration as he criticised the policy. “The people-smuggling gangs would exploit women and girls, and it would encourage even more young men to pose as 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds,” he said.
Asked about a “moment of radicalisation”, he reflected on his visit to a protest outside the Bell hotel in Epping.
“I met a single mum who had three teenage daughters,” he said. “The oldest daughter, who was about to go to university, had bought some workmen’s boots and put them outside because she wanted the illegal migrants to think there was a man in the house.”
Jenrick said another turning point had been a visit to Dover with the former MP Natalie Elphicke, where he described migrants walking straight into residents’ gardens and kitchens to steal food, a moment he said convinced him Westminster was “totally out of touch”.
“Damaging though illegal migration is, legal migration is even more harmful to the country because of the sheer eye-watering numbers of people who have been coming across in recent years perfectly legally – it’s putting immense pressure on public services,” he said.
Jenrick added: “I think the country now needs breathing space after this period of mass migration. The age of being open to the world and his wife who are low-wage, low-skilled individuals and their dependents has come to an end.
“Reversing recent low-skilled migration will likely mean a sustained period of net emigration. I would support that.”
He said Britain was a net emigration country in the 1960s to 1980s, and more than half a million people left the UK last year. The goal, he argued, was not to “close the border entirely” but to stay open to “coders, doctors and serial entrepreneurs”.
Jenrick, still widely seen as promoting himself for a future leadership contest, denied trying to steal Kemi Badenoch’s thunder.
“I fully support Kemi’s approach which is to develop serious policies with detailed substantive basis behind them. That’s the way we can begin to rebuild public trust,” he said.
But his intervention comes before Tory party conference where Badenoch is expected to set out her own immigration plan.
Jenrick did not shy away from criticising his shadow cabinet colleague Priti Patel. During the interview, he said the points-based system created by Conservative ministers “was the worst policy mistake in my lifetime”. The system came in when Patel was home secretary during Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister.
