Foreign travellers 'evade proper checks in security blunder' at Heathrow's Terminal Five

On five occasions a total of 230 passengers on international flights from Tripoli, Moscow, Berlin, Amsterdam and Prague were wrongly directed to the domestic arrivals area.

Anyone on a domestic flight is spared immigration checks.

Blunders: Heathrow's Terminal Five has been bogged down in controversy since its opening

UK Border Agency staff attempted to trace the passengers when they discovered the blunder.

On two occasions, the passengers were redirected to international arrivals, but in the other three cases some individuals left before the error was noticed.

The news reveals the immigration consequences of the chaotic opening of Terminal Five - when hundreds of flights were cancelled in March - and is an embarrassment on the day the Government prepares to launch its immigration 'enforcement' strategy.

Ministers are promising to deport almost 5,000 foreign criminals and pledging to deport the most dangerous illegal immigrants first.

Tory transport spokesman Theresa Villiers said: 'Within seven days of this Government posing as tough on terrorism they have had to admit that 232 people have evaded proper security checks at Heathrow's fated Terminal 5.

'The Government needs to come clean over what they knew about the dodgy security arrangements at Terminal Five and what they have done to prevent these problems happening again.'

The Home Office said all of the incidents resulted from 'human error on the part of the employees of either British Airways or the British Airports Authority'.