Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick vows to bring back Rwanda plan - but Farage won't be allowed into the party
20 August 2024, 11:53
Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has promised to bring back the Rwanda plan if he's elected to the top job.
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The former immigration minister told LBC he will double down on Boris Johnson's plan to try and stop people making the dangerous crossing of the Channel in small boats.
Speaking as he fights to make it down to the final four in the leadership race to replace Rishi Sunak, he insisted that he wants a "stronger" version of the plan under the last government.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said she will ditch the Rwanda plan and won't be sending anyone to the African nation in a bid to stop people coming to the UK.
She's accused former ministers of spending £10billion on the scheme - but this morning Mr Jenrick accused her of "making this figure up".
Speaking to LBC's Tom Swarbrick at Breakfast, he insisted he would:
- Leave the ECHR as it's not reformable
- Believes there is two-tier policing in the UK in relation to how cops dealt with protests after October 7
- Have no place of Nigel Farage in the Conservative party as long as he's leader of Reform
Read more: 'There's fraud throughout the benefits system' says Tory leadership hopeful Mel Stride
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Mr Jenrick, who is running against Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Dame Priti Patel and Mel Stride for the Tory crown, insisted that he would resurrect the old Rwanda plan if he ever got to No10.
He said: “I want a stronger version of the Rwanda plan.
"That's what I proposed at the turn of the year, one which would enable us to detain people upon arrival, and then remove them with within hours or days rather than weeks and months. I believe that's possible.”
Mr Jenrick quit under Rishi Sunak's tenure, saying his plan for Rwanda wouldn't work and had too many loopholes because it did not go far enough.
Ministers have sent no one to the land-locked nation except a handful of volunteers, despite spending millions on it.
Mr Jenrick defended the cost, and said he didn't recognise figures of £10billion.
He said: “I just don't know what that number relates to. But what I do know is that they are banding around numbers both on the public finances and on illegal migration to justify political choices. They are making this figure up.
“The political choice that Yvette Cooper has made, is because she is too squeamish to have an effective deterrent. She's abandoned the Rwanda scheme before she has come up with any credible alternative.”
He also claimed that every illegal migrant cost the UK around £400,000 each - adding up to millions of pounds.
Britain is also spending billions on housing people in hotels and other accommodation, he added.
Last month, Ms Cooper said she would not renew the contract for the Bibby Stockholm barge, which is currently being used to hold some migrants.
Hundreds of people daily have continued to make the dangerous crossing since Labour took office - and the numbers are on track to be up on last year's.
Robert Jenrick thinks Keir Starmer was 'too squeamish' over the riots
Mr Jenrick doubled down too on his plan to leave the European Convention on Human Rights in order to control migration, and said he wanted to see a migration cap of tens of thousands.
He told LBC: "I have come to the conclusion that the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights, is holding us back in our ability to secure our borders, to remove dangerous people from our country like foreign national offenders, rapists and murderers and paedophiles and to survey terrorists, to keep the public safe, which is ultimately the basic duty of the British state.
"And so I do advocate leaving."
And Mr Jenrick admitted that the party face a "deep well of anger" if they don't listen to the nation and change.
He admitted that the Tories had made huge mistakes which had cost them the election - including broken promises on the NHS, housing, immigration and public services.
Mr Jenrick said: “We being the Conservative Party, rightly face a deep well of anger if we do not listen and change, political wilderness awaits.
"I do accept my share of responsibility for the mistakes of the last four years. I think we did fail to deliver on some very important things. Immigration was one of them.
"We didn't pursue the kind of imaginative reforms that were necessary to get more homes built, and I want to see those done in the years ahead."
But he insisted there was no place for Nigel Farage within the party under him for as long as he was leading a rival.
All six leadership candidates have distanced themselves from the party - but he stressed the party needed to see off the threat from Reform, which won five MPs at the election.
Mr Jenrick said he had "respect" for Mr Farage, adding: "I think he's been an important voice on issues that millions of our citizens care about, like immigration. But he has chosen to lead another political party. And so for as long as that continues, there's no role for him in the Conservative Party.”
Mr Jenrick also claimed that Sir Keir was "squeamish" on the riots and dealing with claims of two-tier policing.
He insisted there were examples of such after the October 7 attacks, saying there were clear differences in how protesters were treated.
He said: “In the public statements that he made, he only referred to the far right. I’m not here to defend the far right. I thought their behaviour was disgraceful. It was anti-British.
"When you see a mosque being attacked where you see blatant racism on our streets, that is appalling and discrete. What were those people thinking?
"But I also was extremely concerned to see retaliatory gangs on the streets of Birmingham, for example brandishing bats and weapons. And I want politicians like myself to be consistently calling out people of any kind who are engaged in that activity.
"And, you know, we even saw a minister in the Home Office, Jess Phillips. Who is a minister responsible for public protection, in particular women and girls, who was appearing to give a degree of legitimacy or justification to some of those gangs? That's quite wrong. I think we, as politicians, should be calling out violence and thuggery wherever it comes from.
“It was wrong that an individual was seen calling for jihad on Oxford Street and that the police initially appeared to justify that as a legitimate expression. I don't think it was. I think in in the context it was highly intimidating.”
