Social housing should be focused on ‘people who have been here for a long time’, Robert Jenrick tells LBC

20 September 2024, 17:43 | Updated: 20 September 2024, 17:47

Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has told LBC that people who have “been in the UK for a long time” should be prioritised for social housing.

Speaking to LBC’s Tom Swarbrick, Mr Jenrick said he would prioritise those who have lived in the UK for a long time if he were to become PM.

He said: "I do think it's right that the social housing stock in this country should be focused on people who've been here for a longer period of time, I think that's a common-sensical policy.

“Unfortunately, we have a finite stock of social housing, that's always going to be the case, and that should be for people who've been here for a sustained period of time, not for recent arrivals.

“The biggest challenge is that the housing crisis is being exacerbated by the sheer numbers of people coming in".

Read more: English identity 'under threat' from mass immigration claims Tory MP Robert Jenrick

This comes after he made the claim mass immigration is leading England into a national identity crisis.

He blamed immigration for what he considers to be a growing identity crisis, explaining the ties that bind the nation together are beginning to "fray".

The Conservative leadership candidate said the scale of net migration, which peaked at 764,000 in 2022, had created “profound challenges” for society.

Watch Again: Tom Swarbrick speaks to Robert Jenrick | 20/09/24

Mr Jenrick also went as far as to suggest this crisis was a contributing factor to this summer's riots, with unrest spreading across the country in the wake of the Southport knife attack which killed three young girls.

Expressing the views on Thursday, the MP for Newark said the "dismantling of our national culture" combined with mass immigration, as well as the "metropolitan establishment" was putting English identity at risk.

Jenrick said immigration "has had a clear impact on our culture, customs and cohesion".

When pressed on this claim by Tom, Mr Jenrick said: "Far too few of our politicians, those in the media, the civil service, those influential people in English public life feel comfortable to talk about this and what I want to do is ensure our children are taught more about English history in our schools, institutions are supporting English culture and identity rather than denigrating and dismissing it, and also that we talk freely about the impact, the very real impact mass migration is having upon English identity…

"When you see events from St George's Day to others, it's often the case that that is dismissed as being something that's not a mainstream opinion whereas I think millions of people in our country care passionately about English identity and want to see our politicians talk about it more".