Robert Jenrick criticised over ‘didn’t see another white face’ comment

People of colour should not have to “justify their Britishness” to Robert Jenrick, Labour has said, as the party criticised leaked comments reportedly made by the shadow justice secretary in March.

Mr Jenrick had said he “didn’t see another white face” during a 90-minute visit to Handsworth, Birmingham earlier this year, before adding “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in”, the Guardian reported.

Speaking at an Aldridge-Brownhills Conservative Association dinner on March 14, he went on to say it was “not about the colour of your skin or your faith”, but about people “living alongside each other”.

The leaked comments come after Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said she would not allow anyone on the right to tell her children “they do not belong in their own country”.

She told the Tory party conference on Sunday: “I am British, as we all are.

“My children are British and I will not allow anyone on the left to tell them that they belong in a different category, or anyone on the right to tell them that they do not belong in their own country.”

Speaking earlier this year, Mr Jenrick reportedly said: “I went to Handsworth in Birmingham the other day to do a video on litter and it was absolutely appalling.

“It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.

“But the other thing I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places I’ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour-and-a-half I was filming news there, I didn’t see another white face.

“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in.

“I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. It’s not about the colour of your skin or your faith, of course it isn’t, but I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives.

“That’s not the right way we want to live as a country.”

Labour Party chairwoman Anna Turley criticised Mr Jenrick for judging “his own level of comfort by whether there are other white faces around”.

The MP for Redcar said: “This weekend Kemi Badenoch said she stood against a politics that ‘reduces people to categories and then pits them against each other’.

“Robert Jenrick in his leaked comments reduces people to the colour of their skin and judges his own level of comfort by whether there are other white faces around.

“His comments clearly cross a red line that his leader has rightly laid down.

“People of colour should not have to justify their Englishness or their Britishness, or their presence in this country to Robert Jenrick or anyone else.

“Robert Jenrick needs to urgently explain himself and why these comments are in any way compatible with what his party leader said yesterday.”