LBC presenter James O’Brien accused a senior Tory of a “breach of the tenets of human decency” after she said some immigrants living legally in the UK should be deported.

Shadow Home Office minister Katie Lam told The Times that would leave the UK more “culturally coherent”.

Lam said: “Everybody who’s in this country illegally I think needs to go home.

“There are also a large number of people in this country who came here legally, but in effect shouldn’t have been able to do so. It’s not the fault of the individuals who came here, they just shouldn’t have been able to do so. They will also need to go home.

“What that will leave is a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people.”

In a monologue on his LBC show on Monday, O’Brien said: “This is an extraordinary breach of what I would describe as the basic tenets of common decency, and it speaks to something that has been happening over the course of the last 12 months, that we are all a little bit guilty of not registering.

“So people like me, and by association you, are not talking about it because it makes us feel so gross and so grim. People sitting next to Katie Lam in the House of Commons, or indeed sitting above her in the hierarchy of the Conservative Party, are not talking about it because they’re frightened of upsetting all the potential voters who agree with her.

“It puts Nigel Farage in a very strange position in that he could reasonably argue that he is no more racist in his pronouncements, or no more far right wing in his attitudes, than senior members of the Conservative Party.”

He added: “How is this happening? How are we becoming as a country where senior mainstream politicians can call for people who have every right to be here to be deported?”

Reform UK have said they would scrap indefinite leave to remain status for immigrants, meaning some who have lived legally in the UK for decades could be deported.