Robert Jenrick has aired hopes of reviving the Rwanda scheme if he became Tory leader and was elected to power.
The Tory leadership hopeful prioritised migration as he launched his campaign, and said he would be “open to” a cap restricting immigration to less than 10,000 people a year.
Mr Jenrick is vying to be the Rishi Sunak’s successor as Tory leader against his colleagues James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, and Priti Patel, all of whom are former government ministers.
The Labour Government scrapped the plan to deport unauthorised migrants to the east African country after coming to office, and has said it cost £700 million in the last year alone.
Speaking at a campaign launch event in his Newark constituency on Friday afternoon, Mr Jenrick said large areas of the British state were “not working for the British people” and claimed the political system has appeared “either unwilling or unable” to do the “basic duty” to “secure our borders”.
Asked to put a number on his proposed immigration cap, Mr Jenrick said: “I said that it would be in the tens of thousands. I’m open to it being less.
“But the key thing is that Parliament decides the cap and every Member of Parliament votes for it, so you can hold them to account.”
He added that he would “hope” to bring back the Rwanda scheme scrapped by the new Government, but this would be “four or five years away”.
Mr Jenrick said his position on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, an international agreement which underpins UK human rights law, was “crystal clear”.
He has previously argued leaving the treaty would make it easier to deport migrants from the UK.
In an attempt to curry favour with grassroots Tory members, the leadership hopeful said he wanted to ensure they were able to choose candidates for elections again.
He refused however, to be drawn into whether Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson would be welcome in a Tory party under his leadership.
Asked if the two Reform UK MPs and Tory former minister Suella Braverman would “feel comfortable” in a Conservative party he led, Mr Jenrick said: “It will definitely be a party in which my good friend Suella Braverman is comfortable. I want to build a big church, a big tent for this party.
“But it has to be a strong tent. I want to ensure that we are a big church, that it has a common creed.”
Asked about the knife attack in Southport on Monday in which three young girls were killed, and ensuing riots across England, Mr Jenrick said he would “back the police” to take action, but also suggested other unrest, such as in Harehills, Leeds during July, was unacceptable.
“I want to back the police, I want to ensure that they can take the robust action they need against these individuals and against people like them in all of the incidents we have seen in recent months, right across the country,” he said.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper responded to Mr Jenrick’s campaign launch by saying he had “a terrible record of failure”, especially on housing and immigration.
She said: “Jenrick is now a symbol of the way the Conservative Party has moved further and further away from lifelong Conservative voters in the Blue Wall.”
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