A leaked letter has revealed ministers were aware of risk to the Windrush generation when immigration reforms were made law.
The letter, written in May 2016 by a Home Office Minister, will refuel a row about whether Home Secretary Amber Rudd should resign.
It proves ministers were aware members of the Windrush generation were facing deportation years ago.
The Government has insisted members of the Windrush should never have been targeted by a wider crackdown aimed at making Britain a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants.
Defending Ms Rudd, and Theresa May who implemented reforms as Home Secretary, ministers have blamed an official-level failure to properly implement policy.
A leaked letter has revealed ministers were aware of risk to the Windrush generation when immigration reforms were made law
The letter, written in May 2016 by a Home Office Minister, will refuel a row about whether Home Secretary Amber Rudd should resign
But the letter, written the then immigration minister James Brokenshire, set out to Labour MP Kate Hoey how the policy impacted on Trevor and Desmond Johnson.
Both legally arrived in Britain from Jamaica as children in 1971 but faced deportation because they could not prove residency before 1973, when the law changed.
The letter, revealed today by the Guardian, lays bare what ministers knew before the scandal broke in recent days.
In other developments, a Government whip has insisted that the treatment of the Windrush generation was ‘nothing to do’ with the immigration reforms implemented while Theresa May was home secretary.
Mike Freer’s comments, in an email to a constituent, said the issues were ‘wholly separate and unconnected’ and accused the opposition of ‘opportunism and hypocrisy’ over the scandal.
Labour MP David Lammy, who has led the parliamentary campaign on the treatment of the Windrush generation, said Mr Freer’s comments were ‘very different indeed to the conciliatory lines of apology’ about the scandal from the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
In the leaked email, Mr Freer explained to a constituent why he would not sign a Commons motion calling for a review of the Home Office’s policy of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants.
But the letter, written the then immigration minister James Brokenshire (pictured on ITV yesterday), set out to Labour MP Kate Hoey how the policy impacted on Trevor and Desmond Johnson
The policy has been blamed for causing difficulties to Windrush generation migrants who are entitled to be in the UK who may not have the documents to prove it.
But Mr Freer said in his email: ‘The Windrush issue is absolutely nothing to do with immigration reforms introduced under the Cameron government.
‘Then the policy was to make it harder for illegal immigrants to settle in the UK. The Windrush people were and are legal.
‘Wholly separate and unconnected.’
Speaking to Nick Robinson on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday, Justice Secretary David Gauke said the Home Secretary should not resign.
He said: ‘No, absolutely, because when it comes down to it, the central policy is right.
‘Clearly, there have been very significant failures in terms of how this has been implemented.
‘I think it is right that both the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have apologised for this.’
Asked if he felt ashamed about what had happened, Mr Gauke said: ‘Yes. It is wrong what has happened. It should not have happened.’
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry led calls for Ms Rudd to go.
She told Robinson: ‘People have died, people have lost their jobs, lost their futures.
‘People working in the national health service all their lives suddenly lose their jobs.
‘It could not be worse and yet the Home Secretary thinks ‘I can apologise and it will be alright’. Well, it won’t be.
‘I really think she should quit.’
When asked whether she believed ministers had implemented a racist policy, Ms Thornberry said: ‘I don’t like to bandy around these things, I’d rather just stick to the evidence.
‘I’m happy to say there is something rotten at the heart of Government.
‘I think that the idea of cutting immigration back to tens of thousands when you know you have no control over one of the major drivers and so, therefore, you need to be enforcing rules and be fundamentally unfair on those from outside the European Union, that is wrong and that is rotten.’