Sir Philip Rutnam, permanent secretary at the Home Office, has told staff at the department that he remains “very proud” of their response to the Windrush scandal despite an official investigation that detailed a catalogue of blunders.

Amber Rudd, who quit as home secretary after wrongly telling MPs that there were no removal targets for illegal immigrants, welcomed the official account, obtained by The Times, which showed that she had been failed by officials before, during and after a Commons hearing on the wrongful classification of Caribbean-born Britons.

“There are elements of this report which just show that, unfortunately, that area of the department did not have a grip on what was going on,” she told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 today.