Essential travel? Robert Jenrick faces more questions over family trip

Secretary of State for Housing Robert Jenrick is facing further questions after it was revealed just before the Bank Holiday weekend that he had travelled 150 miles from London to a home owns in Herefordshire and then on to Shropshire.

Jenrick justified the trip despite having recently urged members of the public not to travel unnecessarily, claiming that he was delivering vital medicine to his elderly parents in Shropshire, and that his family treat their Herefordshire pile as their ‘family home’.

The Secretary of State’s wife and children have been living at the address, it transpires, while Jenrick resides at their London address during the week.

These justifications did not go down well on Twitter, with many estate agents venting their fury that Jenrick had banned them holding face-to-face viewings and client meetings and stopped all but essential house moves, but appears to have side-stepped the lock-down himself.

Clarity

He then tweeted that: “For clarity – my parents asked me to deliver some essentials – including medicines.

“They are both self-isolating due to age and my father’s medical condition and I respected social distancing rules.”

A spokesperson for the PM then said Boris Johnson was ‘confident’ that Jenrick had not broken lock-down rules on travel.

But since then matters have worsened for Jenrick. Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds has called on him to explain his actions, the Daily Mail has asked him clarify why his constituency website claims he lives in Newark and London, while now claiming a third address as his real family home.

Also, a former Conservative MP Anna Soubry described his actions as ‘arrogant’ while one of his Herefordshire neighbours described claims that this was his family home as ‘codswallop‘.

Read more about Robert Jenrick.