Alan Johnson coupled his admission yesterday of having done too little to tackle Britain’s immigration crisis with criticism for some of his predecessors for having ignored the problem.

In words that will be uncomfortable for former Labour Home Secretaries, including Jack Straw and David Blunkett, Mr Johnson said: “The legacy problems of unreturned foreign national prisoners and asylum-seekers may have accumulated under previous administrations but they continued to be ignored for far too long on our watch.”

The Home Secretary’s own admission that too little was done to tackle huge backlogs in asylum cases came as he conceded that Labour had not handled immigration problems well.

Officials are working through a backlog of 450,000 asylum cases discovered in 2006 when John Reid, the former Home Secretary, described the immigration and asylum division of the Home Office as not fit for purpose.

There are a further 40,000 immigration cases — largely people who have overstayed their visas — where the Home Office does not know if they have left Britain or are still here.

Mr Reid backed the Home Secretary’s “honest appraisal” last night. “Immigration is too important a social issue to be ignored or treated with complacency,” he said. “We must ensure that the economic benefits of the movement of labour into Britain are weighed against the social costs.”

Mr Johnson admitted that Labour had “struggled to contain the huge surge” in people fleeing conflict zones in the past decade. At one stage the number of asylum-seekers hit more than 80,000 a year and the immigration system was overwhelmed.

Mr Johnson said that a rational debate on immigration had to recognise that it was reasonable to expect that new migrants should learn the language, obey the law and pay their taxes.

However, he insisted that Britain was now more successful at tackling immigration that most of its European and North American neighbours, citing policies such as the introduction of biometric visas and dealing with asylum applications within six months, including removing failed applicants.

The Home Secretary’s speech came weeks after figures from the Office for National Statistics projected that Britain’s population would rise to 70 million in 20 years. Two thirds of the projected increase will arise through migration or by births to new migrants.

Frank Field, one of the Government’s most vocal backbench critics, said that it was “the first recognition by a top-ranking politician that governments have got the immigration issue wrong”.

He said: “After the 7/7 attacks we drove a wedge between the Muslim community and the rest of us, instead of drawing a divide between the terrorists and the wider community, including Muslims. We got the divide wrong.”

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Three months ago the Home Secretary said he isn’t losing sleep over immigration. Now he’s admitting it’s putting massive pressure on many communities.

“And he’s reverting to the old days when Labour accused Conservatives of dog-whistle politics rather than dealing with the issues in a sensible, measured way.”

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “The Government overreacted to 7/7 by introducing an extension of detention without charge for terror suspects, thereby alienating the Muslim community when we needed their support.”

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