Robert Jenrick

Shortly after his election in 2014, Jenrick was elected to the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

In February 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister of State for Employment at the Department for Work and Pensions, Esther McVey.

Jenrick was re-elected in the 2015 general election with a majority of 18,474, or 57% of the vote, the largest majority in the history of the constituency and the largest swing of any Conservative MP in that election.

In May 2015, he was appointed PPS to the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, and continued to fulfil the role under Gove's successor, Liz Truss from July 2016.

Following the 2017 general election, he was appointed PPS to the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd.

In July 2017, he was elected by fellow MPs to be their representative on the Board of the Conservative Party.

He was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury by Prime Minister Theresa May in her reshuffle of January 2018. He was the youngest minister in the government.

Jenrick was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum.[16] Jenrick has been Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on International Trade & Investment and Vice Chairman of the Groups on China and France.

As Chairman of the APPG for the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, he along with Home Secretary Amber Rudd met Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who was in 2018 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to discuss how the UK could help with the reconstruction of Yazidi areas.[17]

Jenrick is a member of the Parliamentary Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) group.[18][19] In June 2019, he represented the government at the Israel-Palestine peace initiative, led by Jared Kushner.[20]

In July 2019, he said: "I want tackling antisemitism and ensuring that the Jewish community feels protected and respected to be one of my priorities as secretary of state", adding about his visit to Auschwitz concentration camp, "It had a huge impact on me and in particular because my wife is the daughter of Holocaust survivors from modern day Poland and the Ukraine."[21] In September 2019, he said: "I will use my position as Secretary of State to write to all universities and local authorities to insist that they adopt the IHRA definition at the earliest opportunity...and use it when considering matters such as disciplinary procedures. Failure to act in this regard is unacceptable."[22] Jenrick has said his connection to the Jewish community forms "a very important and integral part of my life".[21]

After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, Jenrick was appointed as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. He assumed office as Communities Secretary on 24 July 2019 and became the youngest member of Johnson's cabinet.[23]

His response to the national crisis with regard to housing safety following the Grenfell Tower fire was criticised as demonstrating a misunderstanding of the issue. His approach, which was said to include "naming and shaming", was seen by some as lacking robustness and ineffective. Jenrick was criticised as having failed to deliver on promises and take concrete action.[24] There were eight significant fires after Grenfell, including the Bolton Cube. Thousands of affected residents continued to face financial burdens and their lives remained at risk. This stood in contrast to some more effective measures put in place by the Australian Government to keep their citizens safe.[25] In February 2020, in a survey of leaseholders from 117 housing developments by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity that supports leaseholders, 90 per cent of respondents said the government's response to the 'cladding crisis' had been "no help at all".[26] As of October 2020, it is estimated that 700,000 people are still trapped in flats wrapped in flammable materials, and 3.6 million have fire related defects and face a wait of 10 years before they can sell their flat or get a new mortgage.[27]

He wrote an article for the Mail on Sunday arguing that rather than relatives travelling, local communities should help out.[28][29]

Jenrick's primary residence was his townhouse in Central London, where his wife worked and his three children attended school. Senior MPs called for Jenrick to consider his position, given his high-profile role in Downing Street's campaign to keep the British public inside during the outbreak, including the ban on travelling to second homes.[30]

In light of COVID-19 tier regulations, Jenrick said in October 2020 that a Cornish pasty would only count as a substantial meal if served with a side of chips or salad, but did not count them as substantial on their own.[31]

In May 2020, Jenrick accepted that his approval of a £1 billion luxury housing development on Westferry Road, Isle of Dogs had been unlawful. The 1,500-home development was proposed by Richard Desmond, a Conservative Party donor and owner of Northern & Shell. The government's planning inspector had previously advised against the scheme, as it delivered an inadequate amount of affordable housing and as the height of the tower would be detrimental to the character of the area.[32] However, Jenrick approved the scheme on 14 January, knowing that an approval by that date would enable Richard Desmond to avoid having to pay a council-imposed infrastructure levy of between £30 and £50 million, which could have been used for funding schools and health clinics.[33][3] Tower Hamlets council pursued legal action against Jenrick, arguing that his decision showed bias towards Desmond. It was also reported that Jenrick helped Desmond save an additional £106m by allowing affordable housing at 21%, instead of enforcing the local and London-wide planning policy requirement of 35%.[34][4]

Jenrick has maintained that although the decision was unlawful, there was no "actual bias".[35] Desmond, whose company had donated to the Conservative Party in 2017,[33] made a further personal donation to the party shortly after the approval was given. Andrew Wood, the leader of the Conservative group on Tower Hamlets Council, resigned because of his concerns over the property deal.[36] The planning decision will now be re-determined by a different government minister. In conceding the move did show "apparent bias", Jenrick effectively blocked the judicial review, which originally prevented documents between his department and the developer from being made public.[37] Mayor of Tower Hamlets John Biggs said: "We may never know what emails and memos the secretary of state received before making his decision and what influence they had, but his reluctance to disclose them speaks volumes".[38]

In June 2020 Desmond told The Sunday Times he had lobbied Jenrick at a Conservative Party fundraising dinner held at the Savoy in November. He said he had showed the minister "three or four minutes" of a promotional video for the Westferry Printworks development on his mobile phone, adding "he got the gist".[39] The interview was followed by a Labour Party opposition day motion debate in the House of Commons on 24 June, which forced Jenrick into releasing all "relevant" documents surrounding his dealings with Desmond, including private text messages between him and the developer that show discussion of the then live planning application beginning the night of the fundraising dinner.[40] One of the emails revealed that MHCLG officials were being pressured by Jenrick to work out how to overrule the government's own planning inspector so he could approve the plans before any increase in the Tower Hamlets council community infrastructure levy (CIL), which Desmond would have had to pay.[34] That the minister did not disclose to his department his potential conflict of interest until a month after his dinner has raised concern.[41]

In June 2020, Jenrick was described by Baroness Deech as breaching "the guidance on planning propriety" over his management of a planning application to build a national Holocaust memorial, which she described as controversial. The government department headed by Jenrick took control of the approval process from Westminster Council days after he met the project's main backers, including Gerald Ronson.[42][43]

The planning application was called in by Jenrick in November 2019; this was hours before Parliament was dissolved, and three months before Westminster Council unanimously rejected the scheme. The application was submitted in 2018 by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, an organisation sponsored by Jenrick's department, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).[44]

In July 2020, Jenrick faced High Court action brought by the London Parks & Gardens Trust over his handling of Holocaust memorial planning application and decision to allow his junior colleague, housing minister Christopher Pincher, to determine the fate of the application. Jenrick's decision stripped Westminster City Council of its power to rule on the £102m project – which was to be built in Victoria Tower Gardens – a grade II listed park near the Palace of Westminster, which the trust says is "the last piece of publicly accessible land in central London".[45]

In June 2020, Jenrick faced questions over his links to a Conservative donor after it emerged that he met an Israeli businessman, Idan Ofer, with an interest in the future of a multibillion-pound project that Jenrick, then exchequer secretary to the Treasury, was overseeing. Ofer stated that the £10,000 donation via his Quantum Pacific business was made at the behest of Conservative Friends of Israel, of which Jenrick was a member.[46] Jenrick later said that Ofer was a family friend.[47]

The same month, it was reported that Conservative councillors approved a planning application for an extension to Jenrick's townhouse despite officials objecting to the scheme three times over its damaging impact in a conservation area.[48][49]

The following month, Jenrick received criticism for granting planning approval to a new 17 storey tower in Notting Hill which had previously been rejected three times by the council. The decision was described by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's lead councillor for planning as a "major blow to local residents" and that the development will "cause harm to our unique borough and, in particular, nearby listed buildings and conservation areas." In a letter, Jenrick agreed that the proposals will damage the significance of the area's local heritage, but he argued that the effect on the townscape will be "neutral-to-beneficial"[50]

In July 2020 the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects Alan Jones condemned Jenrick's proposals to extend Permitted Development Rights. In an open letter, he stated that "The extension of this policy is truly disgraceful. There is no evidence that the planning system is to blame for the shortage of housing, and plenty to suggest that leaving local communities powerless in the face of developers seeking short-term returns will lead to poor results." Jones also argued that these proposals contradict the government's own advisors "who had concluded that permitted development had 'permissioned future slums' – allowing sub-standard homes to be built with little to no natural light and smaller than budget hotel rooms." Jones instead recommended that changes should be made to taxation and funding systems to incentivise investment in sustainable buildings, whilst also improving minimum space standards. He confirmed he would be writing to Jenrick as a matter of urgency and the letter will also be signed by CIOB, RICS and RTPI.[51]

In January 2021 Jenrick refused South Lakeland MP Tim Farrow's request to 'call in for review plans for Whitehaven coal mine, the first new deep coal mine in the UK in 30 years. Farron described the coal mine as a "complete disaster for our children's future" and that “it’s utter and rank hypocrisy for this Conservative government to claim one minute that they care about protecting our environment, and in the next give the green light to a deep coal mine.”[52]

In January 2020, Jenrick spoke at the Conservative Friends of Israel parliamentary reception and told the audience that he would "look forward to the day" when Britain's embassy in Israel will be "moved to Jerusalem", adding that "as Housing Secretary I don't like land-banking. I want us to build that embassy".[53] The British government had not indicated it would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the US did in 2018.[54] The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) called on Johnson to sack Jenrick, adding "no minister who openly advocates for law-breaking is fit to serve in Government".[53]

In August 2020, members of Grenfell United refused an invitation to have a meeting with Jenrick due to the slow progress of enforcing the findings of the first phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, a lack of progress on reforming social housing and his controversy with property developer Richard Desmond. In a letter, the group told him "Your perceived focus on the interests of property developers over the needs of an impoverished local community has soured our opinion of you. It tells us you have learned nothing from your previous interactions and conversations with Grenfell United committee members who lost so much on the night of the fire. Bereaved families and survivors sat with you and opened their hearts, and your actions have thrown this trust back in our faces."[55]

In April 2020, The Sunday Times reported that Jenrick had charged taxpayers more than £100,000 for "a third home" in his constituency of Newark, that he appears to use only rarely.[56]

In November 2020, the Public Accounts Committee concluded that Jenrick's constituency had been awarded funding by his department as part of a process that was opaque and not impartial.[57]