Sajid Javid has been compared to Enoch Powell during heated exchanges in the Commons.
Janet Daby, the Labour MP for Lewisham East, hit out at the “disturbing” tone used by the home secretary as he defended a planned deportation flight.
“I feel he sounds like Enoch Powell in reincarnation,” she told Javid on Tuesday.
Dozens of British residents are due to be flown out of the UK to Jamaica tomorrow.
Javid said he was required by law to deport the people, all of whom he said had been convicted of “very serious crimes” including rape and murder.
And he accused Daby of seeking to “lower the tone” of the debate by comparing him to Powell.
“This whole House is proud of all immigrants who have come to this country whether they are first generation, second generation, whether they came for Jamaica or Pakistan or anywhere else,” Javid said.
Powell infamously called for repatriation of immigrants in his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech.
Tory MP Anna Soubry intervened to condemn Daby. “To liken this home secretary, or indeed any member of this place, to Enoch Powell is proudly offensive,” she said.
John Bercow, the Commons speaker, said Javid “might feel greatly offended” by the comparison “and feel it does violence to his values”.
Javid was also accused of “pandering to a far-right racism” by Labour’s David Lammy after he revealed three more people wrongly deported in the Windrush scandal have now died.
“Why is it that still in this country black lives matter less?” Lammy asked.