{"id":395898,"date":"2025-09-04T00:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/395898\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T00:34:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:34:22","slug":"robert-jenrick-says-uk-asylum-seekers-should-be-held-in-rudimentary-prisons-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/395898\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Jenrick says UK asylum seekers should be held in \u2018rudimentary prisons\u2019 | Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Jenrick has called for asylum seekers to be detained in \u201ccamps\u201d with facilities like \u201crudimentary prisons\u201d, in an apparent attempt to outflank Reform with his anti-immigration rhetoric.<\/p>\n

The shadow justice secretary told Tim Shipman at the Spectator of his hope for a \u201cdecade of net emigration\u201d as Britain \u201cnow needs breathing space after this period of mad migration\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jenrick said \u201cthere\u2019s a lot to welcome\u201d in Nigel Farage\u2019s immigration plan but criticised Reform for its proposals on housing asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should be detained in camps,\u201d Jenrick said. \u201cThe facilities will need to be rudimentary prisons, not holiday camps. It\u2019s not what Reform have suggested, which is cabins with a fence around them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also attacked Reform for indicating that their measures would focus on deporting undocumented males rather than women and children. Farage rolled back on his initial pledge to deport \u201cabsolutely anyone\u201d 24 hours after he unveiled his immigration measures<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

Jenrick appeared to suggest the Conservative party should outflank Farage on immigration as he criticised the policy. \u201cThe people-smuggling gangs would exploit women and girls, and it would encourage even more young men to pose as 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked about a \u201cmoment of radicalisation\u201d, he reflected on his visit to a protest outside the Bell hotel in Epping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met a single mum who had three teenage daughters,\u201d he said. \u201cThe oldest daughter, who was about to go to university, had bought some workmen\u2019s boots and put them outside because she wanted the illegal migrants to think there was a man in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenrick said another turning point had been a visit to Dover with the former MP Natalie Elphicke, where he described migrants walking straight into residents\u2019 gardens and kitchens to steal food, a moment he said convinced him Westminster was \u201ctotally out of touch\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDamaging though illegal migration is, legal migration is even more harmful to the country because of the sheer eye-watering numbers of people who have been coming across in recent years perfectly legally \u2013 it\u2019s putting immense pressure on public services,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jenrick added: \u201cI think 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 come to an end.<\/p>\n

\u201cReversing recent low-skilled migration will likely mean a sustained period of net emigration. I would support that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Britain was a net emigration country in the 1960s to 1980s, and more than half a million people left the UK last year. The goal, he argued, was not to \u201cclose the border entirely\u201d but to stay open to \u201ccoders, doctors and serial entrepreneurs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jenrick, still widely seen as promoting himself for a future leadership contest, denied trying to steal Kemi Badenoch\u2019s thunder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fully support Kemi\u2019s approach which is to develop serious policies with detailed substantive basis behind them. That\u2019s the way we can begin to rebuild public trust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But his intervention comes before Tory party conference where Badenoch is expected to set out her own immigration plan.<\/p>\n

Jenrick did not shy away from criticising his shadow cabinet colleague Priti Patel. During the interview, he said the points-based system created by Conservative ministers \u201cwas the worst policy mistake in my lifetime\u201d. The system came in when Patel was home secretary during Boris Johnson\u2019s time as prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Jenrick has called for asylum seekers to be detained in \u201ccamps\u201d with facilities like \u201crudimentary prisons\u201d, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-395898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115143223837484120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}