PM quizzed on Home Office role

Theresa May faces questions from Labour leader over her immigration policies during her time as home secretary

Theresa May faced questions over her immigration policies as new Home Secretary Sajid Javid promised to “do right” by the Windrush generation.

The prime minister defended targets for the removal of illegal immigrants as she confirmed the practice was in place when she was home secretary.

But Jeremy Corbyn insisted Mrs May had “questions to answer” about her time in the Home Office following the resignation of her “human shield” Amber Rudd.

Mr Javid signalled a break from his predecessors in the Home Office by telling MPS he would not use the phrase “hostile environment” to describe the approach to tackling illegal immigration.

Ms Rudd quit after admitting she “inadvertently” misled MPS over government targets for removing illegal migrants.

During a local election campaign visit to Greater Manchester, Mrs May said: “When I was home secretary, yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country who were here illegally.

“This is important. If you talk to members of the public they want to ensure that we are dealing with people who are here illegally.”

Following Ms Rudd’s departure, Labour concentrated its fire on the prime minister who was home secretary from 2010 until she entered Number 10 in 2016.

Labour leader Mr Corbyn said Mrs May “now has questions to answer” about “what she actually did as home secretary”.

“She was presiding over, in her terms, the creation of a hostile environment,” he said.

As well as the row over what she knew about targets on migrant removals, Ms Rudd had been battling intense criticism over the Windrush scandal, which has seen people from a Caribbean background denied access to benefits and healthcare or threatened with deportation despite decades of residence in the UK.

She became the fifth enforced departure from the Cabinet since last year’s snap general election and stepped down the evening before she was due to make a statement in the House of Commons.

Making his Commons debut as home secretary, Mr Javid told Windrush generation migrants who had struggled to prove their immigration status: “This never should have been the case and I will do whatever it takes to put it right.”

Drawing on his own background as the son of migrants from Pakistan, he told MPS: “When I heard that people who were long-standing pillars of their community were being impacted for simply not having the right documents to prove their legal status in the UK, I thought that it could be my mum, my brother, my uncle or even me.”

Asked about the “hostile environment” approach, Mr Javid said: “I think it is a phrase that is unhelpful and it does not represent our values as a country.”

He said he wanted a “compliant environment” instead.

Ms Rudd admitted she misled MPS over illegal immigrant targets.