Robert Jenrick complained about visiting an area of Birmingham where he “didn’t see another white face” and said it was not the kind of country he wanted to live in.
After highlighting the lack of white people, the shadow justice secretary said it was not about “the colour of your skin or your faith” and he wanted people to live alongside each other.
However, he has been criticised by the area’s MP for suggesting he could tell whether Handsworth was “properly integrated” based on whether there were any white people in the area during a 90-minute period.
Jenrick made the comments, which were recorded, during a dinner at the Aldridge-Brownhills Conservative Association dinner on 14 March after he had recorded a video for GB News about litter in the suburb.
He told the dinner: “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.”
A spokesperson for Jenrick declined to comment initially. But later on Monday, Jenrick defended his comments, saying: “Six separate government reports over 20 years have highlighted the problem of parallel communities and called for a frank and honest conversation about the issue.
“The situation is no better today. Unlike other politicians, I won’t shy away from this issue. We have to integrate communities if we are to be a united country.”
Khalid Mahmood, the former Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, which covers Handsworth, said Jenrick was “stoking divisions” and it was “absolutely not” possible to say whether an area was integrated by looking at people in the street.
“I was immensely privileged for 23 years to serve that area and they are fantastic people of all colours, creeds, religions and no religion at all in Perry Barr and Handsworth,” he said.
“I think it’s very, very negative. These people have struggled day in day out to make ends meet under the Conservative government. We’ve got a huge amount of HMOs [houses of multiple occupancy] in the area and the bin strike by the local authority hasn’t helped either. He’s playing on that. For the comment that he’s not seen a white face in Handsworth, that’s just ridiculous. There are all sorts of people, white, black, other sorts of people of all heritages and cultures.”
The area’s independent MP Ayoub Khan said: “The claims made by the shadow justice secretary are not only wildly false but also incredibly irresponsible. He has misrepresented a storied and diverse community, awkwardly distorting the product of an all-out bin strike to fit his culture-warrior narrative filled with far-right cliches.
“What could be seen on the streets that day … was not the result of some failure of multiculturalism. It is the result of 14 years of sustained austerity measures under the Tory governments that he so loyally served, combined with continued neglect and mismanagement by the Labour-run council.”
According to Birmingham city council, the ethnicity of Handsworth is 25% Pakistani, 23% Indian, 10% Bangladeshi, 16% Black African or Black Caribbean, 10% mixed or other ethnic group and 9% white.
Jenrick has spoken previously about the decline of the “white British” population in some parts of the country. In May, he told Sky News that “if you look at parts of Dagenham [in east London], the white British population has reduced by 50% in the last 25 years”. When pressed on why this mattered, Jenrick responded: “It’s not about the colour of someone’s skin.”
When questioned about those “white British” comments, the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said: “People will use different words from what I would use. I’m not a micro-manager.”
Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, challenged Badenoch to explain how Jenrick’s comments fitted in with her speech saying the party 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,” Turley said. “His comments clearly cross a red line that his leader has rightly laid down.”
A New Statesman profile of Jenrick in July 2025 referred to his visit to Handsworth. It said Jenrick “agreed that there was an English ethnicity” but suggested he was concerned with “Britain’s cultural identity, not questions of race and religion”.
Georgie Laming, the director of campaigns at Hope Not Hate, said: “If Robert Jenrick truly wants to see people live alongside each other, he shouldn’t make such inflammatory remarks. Talking down communities plays into the hands of far right.”
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