Tens of thousands of foreign criminals in Britain illegally are avoiding deportation because police are not carrying out immigration checks, a damning report has warned.

A report from the border inspectorate found that police are simply accepting claims made by foreign criminals that they are from the European Union and not carrying out proper checks.

Between 2014 and 2015 up to 193,000 foreign nationals were arrested in this country.

However the independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found huge variations across the country about whether front line officers were passing on details of suspected illegal immigrants.

The report found that some foreign nationals “misrepresent themselves as UK citizens or as nationals of a country within the European Economic Area (EEA), with the hope of evading immigration checks”.