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Robert Jenrick has branded claims that he cried about the Tory party's Rwanda migrant deportation scheme as "total and utter b**locks". The Reform UK MP hit back after it was suggested he "burst into tears" when given the job as Immigration Minister during the last Conservative government.

Mr Jenrick, who defected to Nigel Farage's party last week, was previously tasked with tackling illegal immigration by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But LBC presenter Iain Dale has claimed that the MP for Newark got very emotional when he was offered the job.

And he even suggested that Mr Jenrick thought the policy was too tough.

Recalling a story he was told at a private dinner by a very senior political figure, he said: "When Robert Jenrick was offered the job as immigration minister by Rishi Sunak and he said 'yes, but we can't go ahead with the Rwanda scheme because it was cruel' and he actually burst into tears. Apparently, that did happen."

Mr Jenrick gave a brutal response to the claims during an appearance on our weekday news show the Daily Expresso.

Asked about the suggestion that he cried about the Rwanda policy by host JJ Anisiobi, he said: "Total and utter bol**cks"

An incredulous Mr Jenrick added: "I mean, for God's sake, you almost got me sweating, total rubbish. I actually spent a year of my life working bloody hard to try and fix immigration. Got the small boats down by a third.

"Nobody else has done that before or since. Started to close these hotels, 100 of them we got closed and made a difference."

Mr Jenrick said he doesn't want "a single person crossing the Channel on a small boat".

"None, zero. I want to end this thing," he added.

He also took a swipe at Mr Sunak over his failure to end the "farce" of illegal migration.

"I said to Rishi, who was the prime minister, the only way to fix this is to detain and deport everyone who comes here illegally.

"You'll only be able to do this if you either leave the ECHR, or as I was advocating back then, pass a law that just kind of hives it out so it doesn't apply to immigration. And end this farce once and for all.

"He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. He was more worried about his reputation, respectability so he can swan around the world today, as he does, going to conferences, sitting on the board of Goldman Sachs, you know, going to fancy dinner parties and having Times columnists write nice things about him than the interests of the British public, and I think that's shameful.

"I never respect people who behave like that. I'm much more interested in - can I hold my head up high if I walk down the high street in Epping and see the mums and the grandmothers who are out on those protests, and they're willing to give me a hearing because they think maybe didn't do everything right, but I try my best to protect them and their children and their grandchildren than what people might say about me in, you know, the columns of left wing newspapers or international law conferences in years to come."