Numbers of immigrants being sent home at five-year low

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The slump means more than half a million are still waiting to be deported - often months after their applications were first rejected.

The figures are likely to embarrass Tony Blair, who boasted last year that his Government would make 'significant inroads' into the backlog before he left office.

In the three months of this year, 3,370 failed asylum seekers were removed from the UK or left of their own accord - down 34 per cent on 2006.

In the same period, 6,750 immigrants lodged fresh asylum claims, with around 4,200 of those expected to be judged as bogus claimants.

It means the backlog has grown by almost 900 in just three months.

Ministers blamed the slump on Tony Blair's obsession with reaching a 'tipping point' - the target for removing more failed asylum seekers than the number granted leave - and on the foreign prisoners scandal, which cost the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke his job.

But immigration officials claim they remain hamstrung by a critical shortage of officers .

One said: "We don't have the manpower to catch more people and even if we did there's nowhere secure to put them so they're let out again.

"The Government has effectively given up on trying to find these people.

"It hopes that putting pressure on employers not to give them jobs will drive them out of Britain.

"What they don't understand is that more people will come anyway, and someone will give them work."

The Home Office stopped setting out information on the tipping point target without explanation.

Asked why, officials claimed quarterly updates are now considered 'unhelpful' because there are 'peaks and troughs' throughout the year. Instead, only annual figures will be released.

Despite the backlog, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne insisted he was 'confident' that targets would be met over the next year.

He said the Home Office had 'changed gear' in its efforts to send foreign prisoners home, claiming they were now the priority as the "most harmful foreign nationals".