Browne said the policy was harsh and called some of the Conservatives’ partners in the European Parliament “nutty,” according to the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
Lib Dem MPs have been secretly recorded in their surgeries by undercover reporters for the paper posing as local voters.
The most damaging extracts were published on Tuesday which led to Business Secretary Vince Cable being stripped of some regulatory powers after saying he was “declaring war” on News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.
The Conservatives want to impose immigration restrictions, and while Browne said he was not in favor of “letting rip and letting everyone in,” he said a “proper, functioning policy” was needed.
“The Conservative one I thought was driven by quite a lot of uncharitable instincts,” he was reported as saying.
He went on to criticize the Conservative’s partners in the European Parliament. It left the coalition of center-right political parties in 2009 and joined a coalition of small nationalist parties.
“They (the parties) are quite nutty and that’s an embarrassment to them,” Browne said.
The revelations have played into the hands of Labour which has been trying to exploit the coalition’s ideological fault lines.
Labour work and pensions spokesman, Douglas Alexander, has written to some of the Lib Dem ministers offering them secret talks to discuss their concerns over proposed cuts to child and housing benefits.
“Working together we can change complaints expressed in private into public policy changes,” he said in a statement.
Labour leader Ed Miliband has described the Liberal Democrats as just passengers in a “sham” coalition, propping up the Conservative-led administration.
The coalition leadership has dismissed any suggestion of lasting damage from the disclosures, saying coalitions always have difficulties, tensions and contradictions.
The government was working together to tackle the record budget deficit, they said.
But Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was quoted in the Times newspaper on Friday as saying he was becoming “increasingly irritated” by his ministers. None has been sacked.
