Christian refugees from Syria are being discriminated against by the Government, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

Lord Carey claimed that "politically correct" officials were "institutionally biased" against Christian refugees, who are underrepresented in the numbers being moved to the UK.

His comments came as Russian and American diplomats agreed to restore dialogue over the crisis in Syria following a week of escalating tensions that ended in Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin exchanging barely veiled insults.

Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said both countries would back a UN investigation into last week’s deadly poison gas attack in the country's northwestern Idlib province.

The statements came after marathon talks in Moscow which included a two-hour discussion in which Mr Tillerson tried to persuade Russian president Vladimir Putin to abandon support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Figures show that less than 1 per cent of the Syrian refugees resettled under a flagship Government scheme in the third quarter of last year were Christians.

Lord Carey said: “In the run-up to Easter British taxpayers will be appalled by this institutional bias against Christians by politically correct officials.

"In this the British government is not just breaking its manifesto pledge to look after Christian refugees, it also appears to be breaking the law.”