LAWYERS representing migrants have been physically and verbally attacked after the government described them as “activists” seeking to disrupt the deportation system, MPs said today.

A video posted by the Home Office on social media in August said that the asylum system was “open to abuse” and was allowing legal representatives to “delay and disrupt returns” of people.

The Law Society has said it was “misleading and dangerous,” and Home Office permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft has said it “should not have been used on an official government channel.”

In the Commons, Labour MPs questioned Attorney General Suella Braverman and pressed her to apologise for the comments on behalf of the government.

Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter said: “At the Conservative Party conference, the Prime Minister [Boris Johnson] said he would prevent the ‘whole criminal justice system being hamstrung by what the Home Secretary [Priti Patel] would doubtless – and rightly – call the lefty human-rights lawyers, and other do-gooders’.

“On October 9, the chair of the Bar wrote to the Prime Minister, copied in the Attorney General, asking the Prime Minister if he would withdraw those comments.

“Would [Ms Braverman] at least ensure that the chair of the Bar gets a reply to that letter sent a month ago, because it’s leading to attacks – not just verbal, but often physical – on lawyers.”

Ms Braverman replied, echoing the words of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Appeal recently, that “a minority of lawyers have lent their professional weight and support to vexatious representations and abusive, late legal challenges.”

Shadow solicitor general Ellie Reeves said that lawyers “have the right to work without fear or intimidation” and that Mr Johnson and Ms Patel’s words do “a huge disservice to an entire profession.”

She added: “I’m certainly proud of the legal profession – the Attorney General says she is too – so will she [Ms Braverman] today, in this Chamber, condemn referring to criminal defence lawyers and immigration lawyers as activists and do-gooders?”

Ms Braverman replied: “Any violence, I must make clear, is utterly deplorable, against any lawyer or anyone going about their work for any matter.

“But we have to be clear that in this debate more broadly there are lawyers who have gone on the record themselves to make it very clear that [government critics] are pursuing politics through the courts.”