TORY leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has said he hoped to revive the plan to deport migrants to Rwanda – as he claimed immigration had made the UK “less united”.
The former Home Office minister, widely seen as the frontrunner in the race to replace Rishi Sunak, also claimed he would seek to reduce the level of net migration – the number of people entering the country minus the number leaving – to less than 10,000 people per year.
Jenrick, who quit his job as immigration minister because he felt the Rwanda plan did not go far enough, said he believed it would work as a deterrent.
He also claimed that had Britain left the European Convention on Human Rights, deportation flights would have taken off and the Tories would have done a “a hell of a lot better” in the General Election where they were dealt a historic defeat.
Speaking to GB News about his proposals for Britain to leave the convention, Jenrick (below) said: “I cannot predict what that would have meant for the general election, but I think I can confidently say it would have been a hell of a lot better than it was.”
He added: “A party like ours has to stand for ending illegal migration and the only way to do that is to get rid of this arsenal of laws that are used by illegal migrants to frustrate their removal from our country.”
Speaking about the historically high levels of migration to Britain, Jenrick said: “That has put immense pressure on housing, on public services, it’s undercut the wages of British workers and it has made our country less united.
“You can’t successfully integrate 1.2 million people a year into a country as small as ours.”
Jenrick also argued that the NHS was not a “religion to be worshipped”, adding: “Treat it like a public service to be reformed.”
Elsewhere, Jenrick doubled down on his claims that UK “special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because lawyers will set them free under the European Court”.
They have been disputed by leadership rival Tom Tugendhat (above), a former intelligence officer in the British Army, who said earlier on that Jenrick’s statement “risks making life much more dangerous for our soldiers”.
He added: “I’m extremely concerned about the use of language that suggests that it is appropriate to resist arrest and not surrender to the British Armed Forces when you’re asked to do so.”
Asked about the claims, made in a campaign video shared on social media, Jenrick said: “Our very respected former colleague Ben Wallace, one of the best defence secretaries in modern times, used his first intervention after leaving office to make almost this very point.
“He said that he would think it was difficult for the UK, our armed forces, to conduct a similar operation to the one that the United States did to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
“That’s wrong. I don’t want our human rights apparatus to be standing in the way of taking the right operational decisions for our national security and for protecting the lives of the brave men and women who serve in our special forces.”
