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Robert Jenrick accused of spreading doctored 'stop the boats' recording of Labour MP - as party blame Guido Fawkes

Reform UK posted a 'clip' of the newly appointed Immigration Minister, Bassetlaw MP Jo White, speaking to constituents last year

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Robert Jenrick has been accused of doctoring a voice recording of a Labour MP
Robert Jenrick has been accused of doctoring a voice recording of a Labour MP. Picture: Alamy

By Alice Padgett

A Labour minister has demanded an apology from Reform UK after Robert Jenrick shared what appears to be an edited audio clip of the MP speaking on small boat crossings.

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Reform UK posted a clip of the newly appointed Immigration Minister, Bassetlaw MP Jo White, speaking to constituents last year.

In the clip, she appears to say: "I don't care if we stop the boats."

However, Ms White has since shared the extended version of the clip, in which she said: "I don’t care who will stop the boats… my number one priority is to stop those boats."

She hit back at the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson, writing "Reform have deliberately twisted my words to mislead the public. They should withdraw their false claim and immediately apologise."

Mr Jenrick said, in a now-deleted post, that Prime Minister Andy Burnham “clearly doesn’t give a stuff about stopping the boats”.

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Despite this, when LBC contacted Reform UK about the audio, they laid blame at the door of anti-establishment political publication Guido Fawkes, who they say released the original clip.

A Reform UK spokesman said: “We’ve always trusted Guido Fawkes as a source of information, but perhaps on this occasion they didn’t get the full picture."

Labour MP Jonathan Brash has called on Mr Jenrick to resign over the apparently doctored video.

The official Reform UK X account also posted a graphic of Ms White with the same claim, which has now been deleted.

A Reform UK spokesperson told LBC: "We await Burnham’s first mention of the small boats - he clearly doesn’t give a toss."

This comes as migrants tried to cross the Channel to the UK yesterday for the first time since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.

Crossings resumed on Wednesday morning amid warm, sunny weather and calm conditions at sea after an 11-day hiatus when wind swept the Channel.

Several boats are already thought to have made the journey and arrived in Dover, Kent.

In a busy day for crossings, migrants were seen racing to board a large boat packed full of people at Equihen-Plage near Boulogne-sur-Mer on the north coast of France.

Footage shows the boat leaving the shore with some of the migrants waving to others left behind in the water.

French authorities were seen handing out life jackets and trying to rescue those in the sea.

Crowds of men, women and children had descended on the beach and police were seen stopping one family with a baby boarding the boat.

The crossings come after Mr Burnham walked into Number 10 on Monday and decided during his Cabinet reshuffle that Shabana Mahmood would hold onto her job as Home Secretary.

A Guido Fawkes spokesperson said: "Guido's reporting of these comments merely asked: 'this is either a very clever forgery or she said it, which is it?'. We urge people to actually read our website before lifting material from it."