THERESA MAY was caught out in Parliament today after she had claimed that it was a Labour government that had destroyed documents relevant to Windrush generation residency status claims.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked the PM whether, as home secretary, she was the one who had authorised the decision to destroy the landing cards of Commonwealth-born British people in October 2010.

The PM insisted that the decision was made under a Labour government in 2009.

But after PMQs, her spokesperson confirmed what the Home Office had said yesterday: the cards were destroyed in 2010 in an “operational decision by UK Border Agency” — not ordered by Labour ministers.

A Labour Party spokesman said: “Her spokesperson couldn’t even say when the cards were destroyed.

“In the confusion, one thing is already clear: The change in the law in 2014 that meant members of the Windrush generation faced deportation and the loss of their rights, including to healthcare, was made in full view of the fact that the vital information had been destroyed.

“The home secretary at the time must be held to account for the disastrous impact her ‘hostile environment’ policies have had on the lives of British citizens.”

The scandal that has seen Commonwealth-born British citizens — who, up to the 1970s, came over as children on their parents’ passports and were given the automatic right to remain — be denied healthcare and threatened with deportation was brought to light last month by Jamaica-born Albert Thompson. He said he was told to present a British passport or pay £54,000 for NHS cancer treatment.

Ms May as home secretary was responsible for establishing the “hostile environment” against migrants that required employers, the NHS, landlords and schools to carry out immigration checks on employees, patients, tenants and pupils.

At PMQs, Ms May claimed that Mr Thompson had now been offered free NHS treatment, but Mr Corbyn said that Mr Thompson had still not been informed of this.

He denounced the government as “heartless and hopeless” and said it was Ms May’s “pandering to bogus immigration targets” as home secretary that had cost people jobs, homes and pensions.