Robert Jenrick – 2022 Comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on Language Used by Suella Braverman
The comments made by Robert Jenrick, the Minister of State at the Home Office, on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 1 November 2022.
INTERVIEWER
[Asked if the migrants crossing the Channel were invaders in the way that Suella Braverman had referred to those people as]
ROBERT JENRICK
The expression that the Home Secretary made yesterday was a way of conveying to the public the sheer scale of the challenge that we’re now facing as a country. 40,000 people have chosen to cross the channel this year alone in small boats, arriving on beaches on the south coast of this country or hooked out of the sea by Border Force, the RNLI or the Royal Navy. That is a very significant challenge to this country, which is putting immense pressure….
INTERVIEWER
[But you used the word invasion you mean people who are coming to do you harm?]
ROBERT JENRICK
Well, I think in this job, you do have to choose your language carefully, but you also have to accept that many millions of people across this country are rightfully extremely concerned.
INTERVIEWER
[Said that the interview would return to that, but asked if Jenrick would use the word]
ROBERT JENRICK
It’s not a phrase that I’ve used, but I do understand the need to be straightforward with the general public about the challenge that we as ministers face because the issues that we will discuss like Manston are very important. But, they are the symptoms of a major problem that we’re facing as a country. We might find, because November is historically a time when a record number of individuals cross the channel, that we end up with 50,000 people who have made this perilious journey. That, as a number of independent experts have said, is causing our system to be overwhelmed. It is putting huge pressure on the asylum system, on social housing, on hotel accommodation and it’s very hard to plan efficiently and effectively for that. We have to grip this challenge because it’s a first order priority of a Government to secure our borders and ensure the public can have faith in the asylum system.
INTERVIEWER
[Asked if people were being held at Manston for more than 24 hours]
ROBERT JENRICK
The law is very clear that we should not be holding people for more than 24 hours. We need to make sure that this site operates legally and so we need to make sure that people are moved out of the site as swiftly as we can. There is also a competing legal obligation on us not to leave people destitute and it would be quite wrong of me as the Immigration Minister, indeed of the Home Secretary, to leave people on the streets of Kent without support and care.
As you heard from the doctor who spoke very movingly a moment ago, to leave those individuals who are sometimes bewildered to be in a foreign country having been through an extraordinary experience of crossing the Channel in a small boat to leave them without support. So we have to balance those two competing duties. What I’m clear on as Immigration Minister, and I’ve only been doing the job for five days, but that I’m clear on is that we will get the hotels procured and we will get the individuals out of Manston as quickly as we can.
