Is Birmingham really the least integrated part of UK?

At this week's Tory conference, the shadow justice secretary has, in the face of backlash, doubled down on his previous comments which were made about his trip to the city’s suburb of Handsworth.

Sir Keir Starmer has called out the comments, while Mr Jenrick, a former Tory leadership contender, was also criticised by former Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street.

In audio obtained by the Guardian, he can be heard telling the Aldridge-Brownhills Conservative Association back in March: "It's as close as I've come to a slum in this country."

“The other thing I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places I’ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour and a half I was filming news there I didn’t see another white face.

“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in.”

He added: “I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. It’s not about the colour of your skin or your faith, of course it isn’t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives. That’s not the right way we want to live as a country.”

Mr Jenrick has been backed by Kemi Badenoch while Mel Stride has somewhat distanced himself, but clarified he thought his colleague was not a racist.

Mr Jenrick has now come out and said: "I won’t shy away from these issues.

“I think it’s a very dangerous place if we have a country where people are living in ghettoised communities where people are not living together side by side in harmonious communities.”

But is Handsworth really the least integrated place in the UK?

Handsworth’s population by ethnicity is 9 per cent white, 25 per cent Pakistani, 23 per cent Indian and 10 per cent Bangladeshi, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

Policy Exchange released a study in 2016 which found that the least integrated town in the UK is Boston in Lincolnshire, which has a Reform MP and had the highest leave vote share in the 2016 European Union referendum. The top five are:

1. Boston, Lincolnshire
2. Wisbech, Cambridgeshire
3. Oldham, Greater Manchester
4. Spalding, Lincolnshire
5. Bradford, Yorkshire

The report read: “The least integrated places — Oldham, Accrington, Bradford, Boston, Wisbech, Spalding — are either the post-industrial districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire dominated by people of Pakistani heritage or the towns of Eastern England that have experienced large inflows of East Europeans.”

Boston was shown to have a high number of eastern European migrants but according to an Independent report there was little integration between the groups.

The most integrated towns are Amersham, Esher, Rickmansworth, and Sutton Coldfield, which is a suburb of Birmingham.

The report added: “These tend to be prosperous suburbs or small towns around London and Birmingham with the largest minorities being successful Indians or Europeans.”