The UK Border Agency will be split into two after hundreds of thousands of people were let into the country without the appropriate checks.

Home Secretary Theresa May told MPs the UK Border Force will be split from the UK Border Agency and come under a separate operational command “with its own ethos of law enforcement”.

Current Wiltshire CC Brian Moore is to head the new Border Force from March.

It comes after revelations that border checks were relaxed to the point where they were “suspended regularly and applied inconsistently since at least 2007”, Mrs May said in Parliament on February 20.

Brodie Clark, the former head of the Border Force, was suspended and later resigned over the row last year.

The new National Crime Agency meanwhile will be given the responsibility of improving intelligence at borders.

Mrs May said the Vine Report, which looked into failings at UK borders, showed a change in management culture was needed.

She said: “The Vine Report reveals a Border Force that suspended important checks without permission; spent millions on new technologies but chose not to use them; was led by managers who did not communicate with their staff; and that sent reports to ministers that were inaccurate, unbalanced and excluded key information.”

She added that the UKBA had been a “troubled organisation” since its founding in 2008. She said “From foreign national prisoners to asylum seeker backlog to the removal of illegal immigrants, it has reacted to a series of problems instead of positively managing its responsibilities.

“With a new chief executive and a plan for comprehensive change, I believe that UKBA is in better hands for the future.”

The report revealed that in July 2008 ministers approved the relaxation of checks on school coach parties at French ports.

But the Border Force also waived checks for other passenger groups “over and above” what had been approved.

Mrs May added that around 500,000 European Economic Area nationals travelling to the UK on Eurostar services from France had not been subjected to special checks between 2007 and 2011.

Meanwhile “Secure ID” finger print checks, which are used to check the fingerprints of foreign nationals arriving on Visas, were “suspended on a number of occasions without ministerial approval”, Mrs May said.