Con artists from around the globe are effectively stealing more than £60million of NHS treatment a year – and Brown’s clowns haven’t a clue how to stop them.

Four years after Labour unveiled a so-called “crackdown” on this abuse, the initiative is unmasked as one more gimmick that has failed.

An investigation reveals one hospital in three ignores Government advice that they should police patients’ eligibility for treatment.

That’s why one man from Lagos regularly flies to Britain to have his heart problem treated. Another states he had a right to be treated for free until he was well, pointing out that there was nothing the hospital could do about it.

When the then Health Secretary John Reid passed the buck to doctors in 2004 and ordered them to stop the health cheats, it was futile, unfair and an abject surrender of the Government’s responsibility to control our borders.

“There’s a difference between being civilised and being taken for a ride,” said Reid. “We’re not mugs.”

Oh no? Tell that to all the patients who can’t get the NHS treatment they have paid for in taxes because the beds are full of the world’s freeloaders.