A trio of senior Cabinet ministers were left licking their wounds this evening after a torrid day which brought more revelations in the foreign prisoner fiasco, a revolt by 2,000 angry nurses and the Deputy Prime Minister’s admission of an illicit affair.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, was facing mounting calls in Westminster for his resignation over the mistaken release of more than 1,000 foreign prisoners facing deportation.

The Conservatives revealed that more than 250 of these - including murderers, rapists and child sex attackers - had been wrongly set free in the six months after the Home Office realised the system was in crisis.

At the Royal College of Nurses conference in Bournemouth, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, was forced to abandon a prepared speech on the modernisation of the NHS by furious delegates.

And in Sutton, Hull, John Prescott was at his home trying to repair the damage to his 45-year marriage to Pauline, caused by revelations that he had a two-year affair with Tracey Temple, his 43-year-old secretary.

With a week to go before local elections, Conservatives seized on the unfolding scandal at the Home Office.

In angry exchanges in the Commons both David Cameron, the Tory leader, and David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, questioned Tony Blair's decision to let Mr Clarke continue in his job despite his offering to resign.

The freed prisoners, released between 1999 and last month, included three foreign murderers, nine rapists and five child sex offenders, all of whom would normally be considered for deportation after serving their sentences.

The pressure on Mr Clarke increased sharply after it emerged that 288 - or more than a quarter - of the prisoners were released since the Government was officially informed last summer that the system was failing to identify foreigners liable for removal from the UK.

Mr Clarke had said last night that "very, very few" had been released since a National Audit Office report last July.

The issue dominated a heated session of Prime Minister's Questions, where Mr Cameron charged that Mr Clarke had presided over "systemic failure", failed to deal with it and had then "misled people" over the scale of the problem.

"Isn’t it clear that he cannot give the Home Office the leadership it so badly needs?" Mr Cameron demanded.

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