Robert Jenrick

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, alongside his reluctance to engage with representatives of the many thousands of British citizens whose lives remained at risk. 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 has take concrete action. 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. 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".

In April 2020, despite Jenrick repeatedly urging the public at televised press briefings to stay at home during the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, it was claimed on the front page of the Daily Mail, dated 10 April 2020, that he had twice flouted government restrictions after they were announced first by travelling 150 miles from London to a second home in Herefordshire, Eye Manor, where he was now living with his family, and then by travelling 40 miles to see his parents near Ludlow, Shropshire. He was accused of hypocrisy. Sources close to the minister defended the latter trip by saying that he was delivering food and medication, and did not enter the house.

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". The British government had not indicated it would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the US did in 2018.

In April 2020, The Sunday Times revealed 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.

Jenrick was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum. However, he was one of 188 MPs to vote to leave the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, without a deal, voting against the government motion to extend the Article 50 process. 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.

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

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." 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."

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.

He was made Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury on 9 January 2018, before which he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Michael Gove as Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary. From 2018 to 2019, he was the youngest male minister in the government of Prime Minister Theresa May. Jenrick was appointed Communities Secretary by Boris Johnson in July 2019.

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.

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.

In his constituency, Jenrick has campaigned for improvements in education and social mobility. He developed and campaigned for the establishment of a free school in Newark, The Suthers School which was granted as the last act of Prime Minister David Cameron. He serves as a governor of the school, which opened in September 2017. He has campaigned for infrastructure investments in and around Newark, including the proposed Newark A46 Northern By-Pass.

In February 2016, Channel 4 News alleged overspending in Jenrick's 2014 by-election victory. Jenrick said he was confident his election expenses had been compiled in compliance with the law. Nottinghamshire Police took no action as too much time had passed since the alleged offence. In March 2017, the Electoral Commission released a report on their investigation into spending allegations at a number of elections. They concluded that the Conservative Party had contravened the spending rules three times (the 2014 Newark by-election being one of those times) and committed offences twice, and accordingly fined the party £70,000.

In February 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Employment Minister, 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.

The article about Jenrick on Wikipedia was one of a number edited in May 2015 by computers owned by Parliament in what The Daily Telegraph described as "a deliberate attempt to hide embarrassing information from the electorate".

In November 2013, Jenrick was selected to contest the parliamentary constituency of Newark, where the sitting member had resigned following a cash for lobbying scandal. At a by-election held on 5 June 2014, he retained the seat with a reduced majority of 7,403. Jenrick became the first Conservative candidate to win a by-election in government since William Hague in Richmond in 1989 and achieved the strongest peacetime by-election result for the Conservative Party in government for over 40 years.

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

At the general election of 2010, Jenrick contested Newcastle-under-Lyme for the Conservative Party, achieving at 9.4% one of the largest swings to the Conservatives, but falling short of the incumbent, Paul Farrelly of the Labour Party, by 1,582 votes.

Jenrick owns two £2m homes in London, one of which is a £2.5m townhouse less than a mile from the Houses of Parliament. He also owns Eye Manor, a Grade I listed building in Herefordshire which he purchased for £1.1 million in 2009. His constituency of Newark is 150 miles (240 km) from his 'family home' in Herefordshire. He rents a £2,000-a-month property in his Newark constituency, which he bills to the taxpayer.

Jenrick qualified as a solicitor in 2008 and practised corporate law with Skadden Arps and Sullivan & Cromwell in London and Moscow. Immediately prior to being elected to parliament in 2014 Jenrick was a Director of Christie's, the auction house.

Jenrick attended Wolverhampton Grammar School before reading history at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 2003. He was news editor at student newspaper Varsity in 2001. He was Thouron Fellow in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania from 2003–2004. He subsequently studied law, gaining a graduate diploma in law from The College of Law in 2005 and completing a legal practice course at BPP Law School in 2006.

Robert Edward Jenrick (born 9 January 1982) is a British Conservative Party politician serving as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government since 2019. He has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Newark since 2014.

Jenrick was born in Wolverhampton in 1982. He grew up in Shropshire near the town of Ludlow, as well as in Herefordshire.