Robert Jenrick has outlined his plan to combat legal and illegal migration. Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP
Integrating migrants into society is “impossible” at current levels of immigration, Robert Jenrick said in his first comments since resigning.
The former immigration minister who resigned from Rishi Sunak's Rwanda Bill on Wednesday warned the Tories would face “impossible white-hot voter fury at the ballot box” unless they did more to reduce historically high levels of immigration.
Writing exclusively for The Telegraph, Mr Jenrick outlined his plan to tackle legal and illegal migration and accused the Prime Minister of failing to keep his word to “do whatever it takes” to stop the boats.
He said The Rwanda bill does not go far enough and will result in only some token, half-filled deportation flights due to the ongoing carousel of legal problems caused by the failure to block individual migrants' appeals.
Mr Jenrick resigned on Wednesday after losing his fight to strengthen the bill and implement a full package of reforms to reduce record net migration.
His criticism of the emergency legislation will be a selling point for right-wing Tory MPs who are threatening rise before the second reading of the bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
In his article, Mr Jenrick warned that successive governments had not paid enough attention to legal migration, although it puts more pressure on community cohesion, public services and housing than illegal migration.
“General Services practices and hospitals don't grow on trees. Integration is impossible if you let in more than 1.2 million new people, as we have done in the last two years,” he wrote.
“There is no better example of the failure of the Westminster Consensus over the last 30 years than by allowing historically unprecedented levels of immigration, with disastrous consequences for the country and ignoring the clear wishes of voters at every turn.
“Centre-right parties across Europe have The choice is to start addressing the core concerns of ordinary people when it comes to immigration, or face your white-hot rage at the ballot box.”
He warned that the five-point plan announced this week to cut net migration from a record high of 745,000 would still leave the government with a “significant way to go” before meeting its 2019 manifesto pledge to reduce it below the then level of 226,000 people.
Mr Sunak described the plan as delivering the biggest reduction in net migration ever – by 300,000 people.
But Mr Sunak Jenrick wanted to go further, introducing formal restrictions on visas and immediately changing the way two-year graduate visas are issued to stop universities exploiting the lucrative international student market.
“Too many universities have fallen into migration , not the education business, and are selling low-quality short courses as a back door to life in the UK,” he said.
On Thursday Mr Sunak insisted the proposed legislation was “not only the right approach but the only approach” to starting deportation flights before the next election, declaring Rwanda safe and blocking all but a “vanishingly” small number of legal challenges .
He said Rwanda would have left the country if the government had gone further in abandoning international human rights law, leaving the UK with nowhere to send deported asylum seekers.
p>The Prime Minister's emergency migration scheme to Rwanda has only resulted in the Government's official legal opinion giving “at best a 50 per cent chance of success” before the next general election.
Attorney-General Victoria Prentice has been told the law leaves significant The risk of flights being blocked by the European Court in Strasbourg.
The Government Legal Department's recommendations were signed by Sir James Eadie, Britain's most senior legal adviser on matters of national importance, who led the government's defense of Rwanda's policy in the Supreme Court this year.
Discovery In his article, Mr Jenrick described his arrival at the “beleaguered” Home Office a year ago as the UK “crossed the line” at the height of the small craft crisis.
He said it was being made worse by the small craft crisis.
The “inexcusable” and “farcical” situation of hotels full of asylum seekers, whose actions were prevented by human rights laws.
“So the Prime Minister was right to promise to do everything possible to put an end to this farce. And until Wednesday he kept his word,” he wrote.
Mr Jenrick said Mr Sunak was also right this week to say the Rwanda Bill introduced on Wednesday went further than ever before. But he concluded that, if passed, it would still fail to end the “merry-go-round of legal challenges that prevent the rapid removal of arriving small boats in sufficient numbers to create a meaningful deterrent.”
That's because Section Four of the bill would allow migrants to file complaints against their individual deportation to Rwanda, allowing “each arriving small craft to come up with a reason for deferring their removal.”
Mr Sunak insists on the number of successful claims. migrants against deportation under the bill would be “vanishingly rare”, but Mr Jenrick predicted migrants backed by “small boat-chasing law firms” would flood the courts with cases.
“The backlog of cases, will likely continue to pile up, and cases that would take months at best to resolve will be delayed significantly longer. Injunctions are likely to follow. And we'll start losing bail cases, which will force us to release people from custody. People will, of course, hide and disappear in communities,” he said.
“So the idea that this bill will ensure that all arrivals are detained and quickly removed is for the birds. The only bill that would achieve this is one that would guarantee removal within days rather than months of arrival, blocking isolated problems that would otherwise prevent it.
He also warned that refugee deportation flights to Rwanda would continue to be blocked by Strasbourg judges using Rule 39 injunctions (the first of which was passed in June last year) as ministers would be limited in their ability to use new powers to ignored.
“In practice, I know that the occasions when this [power] will be used are vanishingly rare,” he said. “It would be unforgivable if the government, after two acts of parliament, was derailed by the same problem that led to the disruption of flights more than a year ago.
“The bill should, therefore, by clear statutory language, prevent Rule 39 indicators from preventing removal.”
It also for the first time publicly called for the UK to withdraw from international treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights, saying Britain could better control its borders if it “extricated itself” from the “complex web of international frameworks”.
Jenrick's contradiction to Sunak's claims about his Rwanda bill is sure to be noted by Conservative migration hardliners this weekend as they weigh whether to support or oppose the legislation.
Four prominent Conservative groups are weighing in their arguments. on how to vote on emergency legislation – the European Research Group, the Common Sense Group and the New Conservatives, who are all on the right of the party, as well as the moderate Tory One Nation group.
Some are expected on Monday Conservative MPs will say how they plan to vote at the second reading of the bill on Tuesday, although some may abstain and wait to decide what to do at the third and final reading, which could come after Christmas.
Friday evening Mr Sunak was reported to be adamant he would not back down or accept significant changes to his Rwanda plan, despite pressure from MPs to compromise.
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