Gareth Davis, Shadow Ex-Chef, and Secretary of the Treasury, is with us now. Who are you backing?

I'm backing Robert Jenrick.

Why?

A number of reasons, but principally, my air of interest is on the economy. As a former Treasury Minister, I think he has identified some of the challenges that we face going forward, namely having an offer for younger people, making sure that our towns are not left behind, and making sure that we have the infrastructure we need. Obviously, we have made progress on all of those areas in government, but he has a platform and the ideas that resonate most with me in terms of where we want to go and where we need to go. I also think he's a very strong performer. I think he'll hold this Labor Government to account very effectively collectively, and I think he'll unite the party.

You say not leaving towns behind. In what way?

Well, he grew up in Wolverhampton and is from the East Midlands. I represent an East Midlands constituency with two towns of Grantham and Borne. We've seen over many years a focus on Metropolitan cities, both in terms of government funding, but also investment from outside organizations and businesses. We need to spread opportunity around the country. That's why we got elected in 2019 on a leveling up agenda. We made some progress, but we need to make more progress going forward. I think he gets that not just because of the way he grew up, but because he appreciates that in order to grow our economy, to tackle productivity that's been pervasively low over decades, we've got to get every part of the country moving, and towns are a big part of that.

What do you make of his comments on mass migration, turning cities such as Birmingham into segregated communities?

I think what he was saying is that it wasn't the whole city of Birmingham. It wasn't just Birmingham. It's pockets of communities and certainly pockets of cities which are not as integrated as they should be or could be. I think it's important in leadership elections like this, setting out the challenges we face as a country, being honest about those challenges and having difficult conversations. One of those is about the fact that clearly some communities are not as integrated as they should be, and we would like them to be, and that's what he was saying at the Hustings.

How does talking about segregated communities help with integration? How can it possibly help?

I think, like I said, it's about having Having an honest conversation about this, getting it on the agenda so that we can make progress. I think there's two parts to it. One is ensuring that we work with community leaders and public bodies and the police and schools to bring about a more cohesive, integrated society which makes our country better. Secondly, it is about having an honest conversation about mass migration, where legal migration has significantly increased over the last couple of decades. We need to tackle that. That's why he's calling for a legal cap on migration to ensure that we can get that down and we can be a bit more controlled in terms of who's coming to the country. Then once they're here, how they integrate into our country and our society.

When he was on the show last week, actually, he was talking about how his policies had helped with stopping the boats. We saw so many people needlessly lose their lives yesterday. How effective has that been going forward?

Well, it's a complete tragedy and what happened yesterday and this week, and there's a number of tragedies that we can point to, and that's exactly why we absolutely have to tackle this issue.

It's why we had the government-But you had a very long time to be able to do that and threw a load of money at it, and it didn't work.

We were making progress. We had challenges for sure that you and I have talked about before, legal challenges in terms of making progress with having a third country process applications those coming to our country. Labor has abandoned that.

The numbers have gone up 30% in the last year of your government.

We needed to get control of it, and we had a plan to process overseas and to make sure that if you come here illegally, you do not stay here and have that deterrent effect. Having that deterrent was the key to tackling illegal migration. That deterrent has now been abandoned and left with no plan in place by this labor government, and Rob has set out a plan to tackle that. If we don't tackle that, one, it will lead to more tragedies that we're seeing recently. It will embolden the gangs to bring more people over under dangerous conditions, and the public will absolutely not trust us, again, if we can't have a clear plan to tackle what is a major issue for a lot of people.

You had 14 years to do that.

Well, the issue of the boat crossings is a relatively new phenomenon since 2018. Before that, the that they were coming across in lorries. We've never been shying away from the fact that it's a really complicated issue, very complicated in terms of legal issues and challenge, which is why, again, Rob and his leadership campaign has set out a plan to overcome some of those legal challenges. But now it falls on the labor government to tackle this like we were trying to do with a deterrent effect.

They say it doesn't work, and that's why they're going at it a different way.

I don't know what that different way is. They need to-We do.

You know that they're going after the gangmasters. That's their plan.

Well, we were going after the gangmasters. It didn't work. We did actually reduce it significantly. Then it went up by 30%. But the thing that would have stopped the boats, ultimately, is to stop people getting on the boat in the first place, and that's having the deterrent.

That's what labor are planning to do. Or should I call them the government?

I'm not sure that is. We've not seen any deterrent effect coming out from this labor government, and I encourage them to come out with it.

Because otherwise, more It's been in the government for less than two months so far, so we'll have to wait and see, won't we? Talk to me about Grenfell before I let you go. Should legal action follow this long-awaited report?

Well, clearly, Grenfell was a tragedy, and we should never forget those who died and the survivors. It's why we launched and commissioned the public inquiry in the first place and took action in government to both fund the remediation and identify buildings of risk, but also strengthen regulation. The report's out later today. I I can't obviously prejudge what it's going to say, but I would certainly encourage government and we would support any measures to strengthen action to make sure that that tragedy never happens again.

Tragedy or a crime?

I'm not going to get into that.

I'm sure you followed the inquiry and you know exactly what came out in the first phase of that inquiry. I put it to you again. Is it a tragedy or a crime?

It's a complete tragedy. Any loss of life under those circumstances We need to learn from and do everything we can. As I say, in government, we did put in place billions of pounds to make sure that buildings at risk are tackled and identified, as well as strengthening the regulation. But this is not something that should stand still. We should constantly review what action government can take. The review out today, the report out today, we'll have recommendations and we'll look at those very carefully.

Okay, it's good to see you. Thanks very much indeed. Who's going to be first out in the leadership-Not long to wait. We'll see. Who do you think? No idea. We'll see. You think they'll stride, don't you? No idea. Okay, it's good to see you. Thank you.