Robert Jenrick has proposed an even tougher migration than Nigel Farage by calling for a return to the times when the UK was a net emigration country. The top Tory, initiating an arms race with Nigel Farage, has declared that the country needs to commit to a decade of ensuring that more people leave the country.
The shadow justice secretary declared “the country now needs breathing space after this period of mass migration” after an “age of being open to the world and his wife”. To do this Jenrick proposes that the Tories should commit to a decade of “net emigration”, trumping Farage’s “net zero” immigration policy, which proposes no net increase in the numbers entering the UK versus those leaving.
Addressing Reform’s immigration plans Jenrick said that while “there’s a lot to welcome”, he criticised the party’s proposals on housing asylum seekers.
In an explosive interview with The Spectator, published on Thursday, the former immigration minister called for asylum seekers to be detained in “camps” as he claimed Reform UK’s immigration plan fails to go far enough.
“They should be detained in camps,” he told The Spectator. “The facilities will need to be rudimentary prisons, not holiday camps. It’s not what Reform has suggested, which is cabins with a fence around them.”
Jenrick’s proposals also include detaining all illegal migrants, including children, and quitting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
He said: “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 to come to an end.”
“Reversing recent low-skilled migration will likely mean a sustained period of net emigration. I would support that.”
Asked if it could last a decade, he said: “It could be, yes.”
Mr Jenrick, who resigned over Rishi Sunak’s approach to legal migration, turned his fury on Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s immigration policies.
He declared: “At the Home Office I walked into a total bin fire. I think the points-based system that was created by the ministers at the time was the worst public policy mistake in my lifetime.”
The former Immigration Minister insisted Britain must use “every lever” of the state to remove illegal migrants.
He said: “We need to suspend visas and end foreign aid.”
Jenrick added that mass migration is “wrecking British culture” and must be reversed, Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has said.
He said: “My view is that mass uncontrolled migration has and is wrecking British culture and identity.”
Meanwhile, Mr Farage has vowed to create a “UK Deportation Command” to identify every illegal arrival living in the UK, with five removal flights per day.
And he insisted Britain must leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and ignore key refugee treaties.
New “modular accommodation” will also be built to detain up to 24,000 people within 18 months of Mr Farage arriving in Downing Street, Reform said.