Home Secretary Theresa May said ad vans telling illegal immigrants to “go home or face arrest” were “too much of a blunt instrument” after the Government confirmed it would scrap the campaign.
The Home Office recently came under fire for using the ads, displayed on billboards carried by vans in six London boroughs.
The department confirmed it does not intend to roll out the campaign nationwide following an evaluation.
At the second reading of the Government’s Immigration Bill, the Home Secretary said: “What I’ve done is looked at the interim evaluation in relation to the plans and there were some returns achieved as a result of that.
“Politicians should be willing to step up to the plate and say when they think something actually hasn’t been as good an idea, and I think they were too blunt an instrument.
“But we should also be absolutely clear about what used to happen under the last government.
“Under the last government if somebody came to the end of their visa, nobody got in touch with them to say to them that they should no longer be staying here in the UK.
“That is now happening as a result of the changes in the immigration enforcement and over the last year as a result of the work that’s being done we’ve seen something around 4,000 people leaving the UK. It’s absolutely right we’re doing that.”
Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable described the campaign as “stupid”, while Labour accused the Government of using language of the far-right National Front in the 1970s.
The campaign was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) earlier this month for using misleading arrest statistics, but cleared over complaints it was offensive and irresponsible.
The ASA received 224 complaints including some from groups representing migrants in the UK, legal academics and the Labour peer Lord Lipsey.
Liberal Democrat party president Tim Farron said it was down to the outrage of the British public that the “cheap political stunt” was scrapped.
He said: “It is right that this pilot scheme is scrapped.”