The shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, has defended remarks he made in March about the Handsworth area of Birmingham, calling it “one of the worst-integrated places” he had ever been to.
In a recording reportedly made during a dinner and published by the Guardian, Jenrick said he had not seen “another white face” in the hour and a half he spent in Handsworth filming a video about litter.
Anna Turley MP, chair of the governing Labour Party, criticised the opposition politician, saying his comments reduced “people to the colour of their skin”.
Handsworth’s Independent MP, Ayoub Khan, said Jenrick’s remarks were “not only wildly false but also incredibly irresponsible”.
The authenticity of the recording at the Aldridge-Brownhills Conservative Association is not disputed by Jenrick’s team.
In the recording, he goes on to say: “That’s not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated.
“It’s not about the colour of your skin, or your faith, of course it isn’t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives.”
On Monday evening, Jenrick firmly stood by his remarks, saying: “Six separate government reports over 20 years have highlighted the problem of parallel communities and called for a frank and honest conversation about the issue.
“The situation is no better today. Unlike other politicians, I won’t shy away from this issue. We have to integrate communities if we are to be a united country.”
Labour’s Turley responded: “This weekend Kemi Badenoch said she stood against a politics that ‘reduces people to categories and then pits them against each other’.
“Robert Jenrick in his leaked comments reduces people to the colour of their skin and judges his own level of comfort by whether there are other white faces around. His comments clearly cross a red line that his leader has rightly laid down.
“People of colour should not have to justify their Englishness, or their Britishness, or their presence in this country, to Robert Jenrick or anyone else.
“Robert Jenrick needs to urgently explain himself and why these comments are in any way compatible with what his party leader said.”
Jenrick is due to address the Conservative Party’s annual conference on Tuesday, when he will set out plans to put ministers in charge of sentencing policy.
Khan told the Guardian that Jenrick had “misrepresented a storied and diverse community, awkwardly distorting the product of an all-out bin strike to fit his culture-warrior narrative filled with far-right cliches”.
Former Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street told BBC Newsnight: “Putting it bluntly, Robert is wrong.”
“Handsworth, it’s come a hell of a long way in the 40 years since the last civil disturbances there and it’s actually a very integrated place,” he continued.
Street also rejected Jenrick’s recorded comment that Handsworth was “the closest I’ve come to a slum in this country”.
The former mayor noted the “incredible hope, optimism and people taking part in education which is based around British values and thinking how they can make a contribution to the future of their region their city and their area.”
“That is not a definition of a slum,” the former Conservative mayor said.
