Asked about a burka ban during a TalkTV phone-in, Mr Jenrick said: “I probably would ban the burka.”
He added: “There are basic values in this country, and we should stand up and defend them.
“And where you see them fraying at the edges or frankly being completely destroyed – whether it’s sharia courts or wearing the burka – these are issues we’re going to have to confront if we want to build the kind society that we want to hand onto our kids and grandkids.”
Mr Jenrick becomes the first Tory frontbencher to back a ban on the face covering in public in the UK.
But the comments put him at odds with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has previously insisted she would not go ahead with the move.
The Leader of the Opposition said bosses should have the right to ban staff from wearing face coverings such as burkas within the workplace and that she would not allow people who wear them into her constituency surgeries.
But she added: “But what I’m not doing is announcing that I’m going to ban the burka, like Reform is doing. Are we going to send police officers into people’s homes to check if they’re wearing the burka at a time when we can’t even keep prisoners in prison, we’re releasing them?
“Do we have space in prison to put people wearing the burka in there? This is what I mean by people just saying things, announcing policies without plans.”
European countries that have banned the burka in public include France, Belgium, Denmark and Austria.
