Lib Dems call for Kemi Badenoch to sack Robert Jenrick over ‘divisive comments’
Share:
Shadow justice minister backs up previous remarks on immigration by telling BBC ‘not all cultures are equal’. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, should sack Robert Jenrick for “divisive comments,” the Lib Dems have said, after the shadow justice minister doubled down on his comments about immigrants with “alien cultures”.
Jenrick was challenged repeatedly on Tuesday morning for having failed to act on the outcome of an inquiry into grooming gangs while he was in the Home Office, despite now demanding one, and for rarely mentioning the issue in the House of Commons until this year.
Badenoch had previously defended the shadow justice secretary’s right to make the comments, which have caused private disquiet among some Conservative MPs. “What I have said is that millions of people have come into our country in recent times, but some of them are coming from countries and cultures that have backwards attitudes to women,” Jenrick told Times Radio. “And that’s backed up by the evidence that we have seen from the Jay report and the testimonies of the victims.
“Pakistani men are over-represented in those who are involved in the grooming gangs, and the evidence we have seen is that some of those have specifically preyed upon white, working-class girls because they viewed them as worthless.”. Prof Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse did not conclusively find there was an over-representation of Pakistani men, saying it found a lack of data which meant it was “impossible to know whether any particular ethnic group is over-represented as perpetrators of child sexual exploitation by networks”.
