Robert Jenrick has strongly criticised the government’s plans to publish migrant crime data, describing it as a “massively watered down version” of what he has been campaigning for over the past year.
Speaking on GB News, the Shadow Justice Secretary expressed disappointment with the Home Office’s announcement to release foreign national offender statistics.
Speaking on GB News, the Tory MP said: “I’ve been campaigning for over a year now for full transparency, for the publication of data on all those who commit crime in our country by their nationality, their visa status and their asylum status.
“I think it’s incredibly important that the public know the truth about low skilled, mass migration and the impact that it’s having on our country and communities.
“Also that we actually do something about it and tailor our immigration system accordingly to protect the British public.
“It’s very welcome that something is happening but this looks like a massively watered down version of what I’ve been campaigning for and what I tried to change the law to be just over a year ago.
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“This looks like it will not shine the light that we really need on everyone who’s in our country who isn’t a British national and who’s committing crime.
“And the statistics are very clear on that. The indicative data that we’ve seen shows that an Afghan or an Eritrean, for example, are 20 times more likely to commit a sexual crime than a British national, and overall, foreigners are 71 per cent more likely to commit a sex crime than a British national.
“That is the kind of data that we want to be in the public domain.
“The indicative data that we have seen, mainly that’s been dragged out of government through freedom of information requests by campaigners, shows that there are massive disparities in the likelihood of committing crime, particularly sex crimes, from certain nationalities.”
Jenrick called for stricter controls on visa approvals based on nationality-specific crime data.
He pointed to evidence from the National Crime Agency linking Albanian nationals to serious organised crime, particularly drug production in Britain.
“If there are some nationalities where the statistics demonstrate beyond any doubt, that those individuals are far, far more likely to be committing crimes, hurting our people, then clearly we should be much more judicious about giving them visas,” he said.
He suggested there had been a “conspiracy of silence” within the system to withhold the “full unalloyed truth” from the public.
Latest figures show 19,244 foreign offenders were awaiting deportation at the end of 2024, an increase from 17,907 when the Conservatives left office in July.
The number has risen significantly from 14,640 at the end of 2022. Despite this increase, Labour has deported 3,594 offenders in their first nine months in power.
A Home Office source highlighted that this represented a 16 per cent increase in deportations compared to the same period in the previous year.
A Home Office source said: “Any foreign national who abuses our country’s hospitality and commits serious crimes should be in no doubt that they will face the full force of the law, and be removed from the UK at the earliest opportunity.”
