It is impossible to successfully integrate so many people into British society while the level of migration is at an "unprecedented" level, according to former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
Asked about Rishi Sunak’s speech on extremism, he told GB News: "I thought it was a good start. It's important to recognise the problem, if you're going to start to fix it.
"At this late stage, all that matters are solutions and the first one to me is that you cannot resolve this problem and build a more united country, which is what the Prime Minister was calling for, a more cohesive country built around British values unless you end this era of mass migration.
"We've been living in a time where up to a million people have arrived in our country every year and it is impossible to successfully integrate so many people. The level of migration that we've experienced in the country over the last 30 years has been unprecedented and that needs to change."
Robert Jenrick comments on the rising numbers of UK migration
GB News
In a discussion with Camilla Tominey, he added: "It's an important part of the solution to say that you can't integrate people at this pace. And we have to roll back on that now. We have to move to a system where immigration is controlled and orderly and the numbers are just very significantly fewer.
"I was elected on a manifesto pledge of tens of thousands. If you look at all of the polling of the public, that is around the level that they would expect, in fact, many people would like it to be less than that. And for a range of reasons, not just these important social questions, economically, in terms of the pressure on housing and public services, we’ve got to get it to that level."
Asked if a cap on migration should be introduced, he said: "I think we should move to that kind of system. I think we now need to move to something that's radically different.
"I was pleased that at the end of last year, I brokered the biggest reduction in migration that we've seen for a very long time, which will lead to 300,000 fewer people coming in each year, but that's not enough. We need to go much further than that."
Robert Jenrick defended Lee Anderson's comments on Islamists in Britain
PA
On comments by Lee Anderson amid the ongoing row with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, he said: "Lee is not an Islamophobe. He made comments which were mistaken."
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
"He's clarified those now and I think we need to move on, because the problem with what happened over the last week is that it's closed down the debate on the really important issue, which is that we have a problem in this country with Islamist extremism, and we need a proper national conversation about that and a strategy to tackle it.
"All that matters now are the solutions and they are reducing mass migration, ending this era of careless naive mass migration, having a new strategy, taking the Prevent programme forward…"
He added: "That doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the far-right. The far-right is just as divisive and destructive, but it is a smaller threat today than Islamist extremism.
"Therefore, the majority of our effort and focus should be on Islamist extremism. And that is not the way the Prevent programme is working today. So we need to refocus it on the real threat to our country and not be afraid to do that out of misplaced political correctness."
Robert Jenrick shared his thoughts on the rising extremist behaviour in the UK
GB News
Asked about policing, Jenrick told Camilla Tominey: "I want to see, as the Prime Minister said last week, more active policing. We don't want to manage these protests, we want to police these protests.
"And many people, for example, British Jews, have found the police to be too passive. And I found this and I've spoken out about this many times.
"For example, when you had a hate preacher near Oxford Street calling for jihad, and the police stood by and allowed the individual to continue - that's completely unacceptable."