Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has said he believes the Conservative Party will commit to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Speaking to GB News, Jenrick indicated that the party is moving towards this position under its new leadership.
He suggested that human rights legislation has been used as an excuse to avoid taking necessary action.
The Shadow Justice Secretary also stated that prison governors must “actively assert” themselves against Muslim gangs in prisons.
Jenrick has tipped Badenoch to shift position
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“I don’t think our positions are so distinct,” Jenrick said regarding his party leader Kemi Badenoch’s stance on the ECHR.
“She also believes that we should consider leaving – in fact, that she thinks it’s the most likely outcome.”
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Jenrick added: “I hope I can persuade the party that this is the right way and I think the argument is moving in this direction.”
He argued that “politics is converging on the view that our human rights laws are completely outdated and we need to change the law.”
Jenrick expressed serious concerns about Islamist extremism within UK prisons, specifically mentioning an organisation called “the Brotherhood”.
“There is mounting evidence that Islamic organisations, there’s one called the Brotherhood, which forcibly converts people within our prisons, are ruling the roost in our jails,” he told GB News.
Robert Jenrick joined Tom Harwood and Emily Carver on GB News
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He claimed these groups are “dictating to governors to how the jails operate” and even “dictating things such as the diet of prisoners”.
According to Jenrick, they are “operating quasi-Sharia courts within prisons” and “controlling them with floggings and beatings”.
Jenrick highlighted HMP Whitemoor as an example, claiming that “45 per cent of the prisoners in that prison are now Muslim”.
“Most were not born Muslim. Most are black British men who have converted to Islam whilst they’ve been in jail, many under the guise of this organisation called the Brotherhood,” he said.
“Something is going on within these prisons; we’ve got to get a grip of this and ensure that people are not being forcibly converted and you’re not having these practices.”
Jenrick called for immediate action, stating: “Governors have got to assert themselves and take back control of these prison wards.”
He criticised what he sees as a culture of appeasement in prisons.
“What we’ve got to see here are prison governors stepping up and actively asserting themselves, not appeasing dangerous people and Islamist groups within our prisons,” he said.
“You never put the welfare of criminals above the safety of prison officers and that’s what essentially has been happening.”
Jenrick criticised prison governance, questioning recent security failures.
“Why was somebody who was one of the most dangerous men in Britain given access to a kitchen with all of the facilities?” he asked, referring to a recent incident.
He also questioned how an inmate in a separation unit at HMP Whitemoor “was able to go on and kill another inmate”.
“Something is going badly wrong in our prisons. The governors and the Ministry of Justice have got to get a grip on the situation,” Jenrick said.
Jenrick also criticised the UK’s asylum system, using the Abedi family as an example of what has “gone wrong”.
“These individuals fled from the Gaddafi regime, were granted asylum here in the United Kingdom,” he said.
“But it seems to be gross naivety, because just because they were supposedly enemies of the Gaddafi regime does not mean that they are friends of the United Kingdom.”
He claimed the family “went on to radicalise their children, who went on to commit one of the most heinous terrorist attacks in our country in modern times.”
Jenrick advocated for a tougher approach to deportation, stating: “We should deport all foreign criminals, irrespective of what crimes they carried out.”
He acknowledged past challenges with deportations, noting: “Some people had clever lawyers. Some people found loopholes. They used the rights to, you know, of having a family to block it.”
The Shadow Justice Secretary concluded that the only solution is to “completely change our human rights laws, leave the European Convention on Human Rights and have an altogether different asylum system.”
