Smash hit

Lady Mar, a crossbench peer, said earlier that she also doubted the measures would make any difference.

"I have a horrible feeling it is all talk and no do," she said in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"You get a lot of sticking plaster remedies when what you need is a major bandaging.

"It's all very well to say we're going to put immigration officers into uniforms - what we want is immigration officers at Heathrow at 4am, because the agents know that is the time to bring their (immigrants) in if they're going to avoid immigration controls."

The Countess said she decided to step down from the tribunal as a matter of conscience when she grew tired of the stories, scams and delays that plagued the system. Tribunals heard the same story time and again, after applicants were coached by immigration advisers.

"There were huge delays in the Home Office, there was procrastination by the lawyers representing the appellants - the whole thing is one horrible mess," she said.

From about 1997 - when Labour came to power - she began to notice that failed claimants were not being sent home, and she claims it had got steadily worse since then, as ever more agents and advisers realised that there was money to be made out of the applicants and the system.

"A whole industry has been built up with false papers, false passports, false stories and a whole lot of legal people who are bleeding the taxpayers really," said Lady Mar.

Liam Byrne, the Home Office minister, said that today's reforms, along with more money for enforcement and removals, and the introduction of compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals, would help to address Lady Mar's concerns.

Charles Clarke, Mr Reid's predecessor, was sacked as Home Secretary after it emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had not been deported at the end of their sentences.

Weeks after his appointment, Mr Reid described the immigration service as not fit for purpose and promised a radical overhaul.

But Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman, said today that it beggared belief that the Government had taken almost a decade to sort out the immigration service.

Mr Reid has already announced that the immigration enforcement budget will double to £280 million a year by 2010.

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