Half as many forged passports being spotted by Border Agency

In 2007, the number of bogus passports spotted by UK Border Agency officials was 44 per cent higher at 3,300.

Some critics say the drop is down to the fact that staff levels have fallen by some 4,000 in the past two years, so there are fewer people on the frontline looking out for forgeries.

It is also claimed that training needs to be improved so that border guards can spot the increasingly sophisticated forgeries, and that detailed scrutiny of ID may be suffering in an effort to cut queues in arrivals halls.

Watchdogs recently found that fewer forged documents were found at Heathrow Terminal 3 compared with Terminal 4, with staff blaming "faulty forgery detection equipment" and infrequent training sessions.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee, told Radio 4 on Sunday: “The worry for me as that people are finding more sophisticated ways of getting in.

“I don’t believe that the people in this industry looked at the figures [in previous years] and thought ‘we’re just going to go away’.

“The concern is that one becomes complacent and believes that the reason [for the falling detections] is that everything is going well.”

However Rob Whiteman, chief executive of UKBA, told The World This Weekend: “I genuinely think that the interpretation that we’re getting more successful at detecting forgeries is correct.”

He said the long-term decline in bogus passports detected at British airports was partly down to the fact that more were being spotted overseas before passengers departed.