Jenrick says he has no regrets over comments on Handsworth integration

Highlights:

• Robert Jenrick stands by remarks calling Handsworth “one of the worst-integrated places”
• Kemi Badenoch says Jenrick may have been “making an observation”
• Local MP Ayoub Khan and former mayor Andy Street strongly criticise remarks

SHADOW JUSTICE SECRETARY Robert Jenrick has defended his comments describing Birmingham’s Handsworth area as “one of the worst-integrated places” he had ever been to.

A recording, published by The Guardian, reportedly made during a dinner at the Aldridge-Brownhills Conservative Association, captured Jenrick saying he had not seen “another white face” in the hour and a half he spent in Handsworth filming a video about litter.

Jenrick said on Tuesday he had no regrets about his remarks. “No not at all and I won’t shy away from these issues,” he told BBC Radio 5Live. “It’s incredibly important we have a fully integrated society,” he said, adding that the country faced “major failures of integration”.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she did not know the context of the recording but added Jenrick may have been “making an observation” about his visit.

“I wasn’t there so I can’t say how many faces he saw, but the point is that there are many people in our country who are not integrating,” she told BBC Breakfast.

Handsworth’s Independent MP Ayoub Khan said the remarks were “not only wildly false but also incredibly irresponsible”.

Labour chair Anna Turley said Jenrick’s comments reduced “people to the colour of their skin”.

Former West Midlands mayor Andy Street told BBC Newsnight: “Putting it bluntly, Robert is wrong,” calling Handsworth a “very integrated place”.