Theresa May has dodged questions about her own future in the wake of the Windrush scandal and deportation targets row as Labour turned up the heat over her role following Amber Rudd’s resignation from the Home Office and Sajid Javid’s appointment as her successor.

The Prime Minister, on the local election campaign trail in Manchester, was asked three times if the issues that led to Ms Rudd’s departure were also a resignation matter for her given she had set policy during her time at the Home Office. But she deflected the questions each time, stressing how the Windrush Generation were “part of us, they are British and...helped build this country”.

Downing Street rallied to Mrs May’s aid, also seeking to distance her from the row over the illegal immigrant deportation targets.

It said how a leaked Home Office memo did not set out a specific national target but an “aim over a non-specific period” to increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants by 10 per cent. “It was not an in-year number-specific goal.”

VIDEO: Amber Rudd quits as Home Secretary as Windrush scandal and targets row proves too much

No 10 explained how a trawl of documents over the weekend to help prepare the Home Secretary for a Commons statement on Monday had mentioned officials’ “operational targets,” which she had been unaware of, and so, accepting she had unintentionally misled Parliament, had resigned in a phonecall to the PM.

Mrs May’s spokesman also stressed the PM, while at the Home Office was aware of deportation targets, which were part of a “performance matrix,” but once she “ceased to be Home Secretary, she would not have received any operational detail of that kind”.

Tory MPs were said to be “incandescent with rage” over what they saw as the key role in bringing down Ms Rudd through leaks by Home Office civil servants, whom she had previously blamed for putting process before individuals in the Windrush scandal.

WATCH: What is the Windrush scandal and why has Amber Rudd resigned?

At Westminster, Labour kept up the pressure on the Government, piling pressure on the PM.

Jeremy Corbyn claimed Ms Rudd had been a “human shield” for Mrs May, who now herself had “questions to answer”.

The Labour leader is expected to raise the Windrush scandal and deportation row at Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow, after which the Opposition will lead a Commons debate on the subjects.

On Monday, Labour was successfully granted an Urgent Question on Windrush with Mr Javid, having only been in post a few hours, taking to the Commons dispatch box to pledge a “fair and humane” immigration policy.

He promised to “do right by the Windrush Generation” and made clear his urgent priority was do whatever it took to put things right.

The new Home Secretary, the first person from a black, Asian or minority ethnic community to hold one of the great offices of state, said his background - he is the son of a bus driver who came from Pakistan in the 1960s - meant he was “personally committed” to resolving the problem.

READ MORE: Sajid Javid appointed as new Home Secretary after Amber Rudd resigns

Diane Abbott for Labour called on Mr Javid to reinstate former protections from deportation, which Commonwealth citizens had enjoyed but which had been removed under Mrs May’s watch at the Home Office through the 2014 Immigration Act.

The SNP’s Joanna Cherry claimed it was the PM who had “created the fundamental reasons for the Windrush scandal” and warned that if policy changes were not made, then “we will have more disgraceful instances of maltreatment of people with every right to be in the UK”.