Shabana Mahmood arrives in Downing Street to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Shabana Mahmood has revealed the racist abuse she receives as a woman of Pakistani origin as she defended her controversial plans to slash immigration.

The home secretary said she is “regularly called a fucking Paki and told to go back home” and insisted her proposals would help to bring the country together.

She made her comments in response to Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson, who criticised Mahmood’s claim the UK is “being torn apart” by rising levels of illegal immigration.

“Acknowledging the challenges facing our nation is one thing, but stoking division by using immoderate language is quite another,” Wilkinson said.

Mahmood, whose parents emigrated to the UK from Pakistan, told him: “I wish I had the privilege of walking around this country and not seeing the division that the issue of migration and asylum system is creating across this country.

“Unlike him, unfortunately, I am the one that is regularly called a fucking Paki and told to go back home. It is I who knows, through my personal experience and that of my constituents, just how divisive the issue of asylum has become in our country.

“This system is broken, and it is incumbent on all........

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