Home Secretary Theresa May admitted that she has never visited asylum seekers’ accommodation as she was confronted with pictures of sewage leaking through a sink in a flat in Glasgow.
The Conservative minister was told that the "sub-standard" accommodation had led to a young child becoming ill.
The exchange came as Mrs May appeared before the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which has launched a probe into allegations of mistreatment.
Keith Vaz, the chair of the committee, told MPs that he had promised the women who lived in the flat that he would show Mrs May the photographs.
Mr Vaz visited Glasgow last week to investigate the allegations for himself.
He told Mrs May: “One particular lady... the accommodation that she was placed in, this woman with two young children, sewage was coming out of the kitchen sink.
"It was so bad that her child got a viral infection."
Another man had waited weeks for a lightbulb in his bedroom and "had to go into the bathroom to read his book”, Mr Vaz said.
The Labour MP said that he had given the man £5 to buy a bulb.
Mrs May told MPs on the committee: “I have visited a range of Home Office facilities. But I have not visited asylum accommodation, no.”
Mr Vaz urged her to see for himself what he described as “sub-standard accommodation being provided” despite multi-million pound contracts to private companies.
Ms May said she would “look into” the case of the leaking sink “and ensure that accommodation being provided is appropriate to the standards we set”.
She also told the committee that she would look into offers by people including Nicola Sturgeon to house a Syrian refugee in their own homes.
On Friday Mr Vaz, who was accompanied on his visit to Glasgow by Stuart McDonald, the SNP's asylum spokesman, said that asylum seekers in Scotland were being housed in "horrific" conditions that were the worst in the UK.
The contract to house asylum seekers was awarded to the outsourcing giant Serco, which uses the subcontractors Orchard and Shipman.
Last week Serco admitted that allegations that 40 vulnerable people had shared a single kitchen in the city's Tartan Lodge hostel were "substantially correct".
The company also said that it had been unable to investigate reports that staff had laughed as they sprayed air fresheners at asylum seekers and taunted others with handcuffs and threats of deportation because it had not received official complaints.
But it rejected reports it had forced a man to stay in accommodation with walls splattered with blood, saying that the substance involved was fruit juice.
Serco has insisted that all 1,860 properties it provides in Glasgow meet Home Office standards and are among some of the most heavily inspected properties in the sector.
The company also says that it has a “fantastic team in Scotland and we are proud of the job that they do in difficult circumstances. If there are specific complaints we will of course look into them".
Last week Serco boss Rupert Soames said that the company would "fess up" to its mistakes and work to fix them.
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