‘It’s clear everyone considers the Windrush generation to be British’

people that needed to be treated differently, and the system was too bureaucratic when these people were in touch.”

The Tories’ “hostile environment” policy has come under focus but Ms Rudd said successive governments have introduced measures to combat illegal immigration since the 1980s.

She said: “This is a failure by successive governments to ensure these individuals have the documentation they need and this is what we must urgently put right. Because it’s abundantly clear that everyone considers people who came in the Windrush generation to be British.”

People from the Caribbean stuck in their home countries while visiting for a holiday after decades of living in the UK will be helped to return to Britain as part of “putting this right”.

Labour Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said MPs and others had warned for years about the problems for Windrush migrants, but had been ignored. She said similar problems could be in the pipeline for other Commonwealth citizens falling foul of the Tory crackdown.

Labour former minister David Lammy stressed that every person in the Caribbean was there because of the European slave trade and Commonwealth citizens were in the UK because they were born under the British empire.

Former children’s TV presenter Baroness Benjamin, a Lib Dem peer who came to Britain as a child in 1960 from Trinidad, told the House of Lords: “The British public are furious at the Government-created Windrush fiasco. It’s a matter of national shame.”