Angela Eagle and Nick Timothy.

A Labour minister slapped down a Tory MP with a devastating reminder of his own time in government.

Nick Timothy has tabled a written parliamentary question asking the Home Office how many illegal immigrants had been given permission to work in the UK in every year since 2020.

Answering for the government, immigration minister Angela Eagle said she could not provide the answer because the cost of collating the information would be “disproportionate”.

Timothy, who was elected Tory MP for West Suffolk at last year’s election, posted her answer on X and said: “They don’t want you to know. But worse, they don’t want to know themselves. Because they don’t care.”

Eagle then took to the social media platform herself to point out that former Labour MP Teresa Pearce had asked a similar question and received a virtually identical answer in 2014 – when Timothy was working for then home secretary Theresa May.

Eagle said: “Remind me Nick........

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