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Women desperate for a baby are being given false hope by profit-hungry fertility clinics, Robert Winston has warned.

The IVF pioneer and broadcaster said that the private sector – which has the lion's share of the market – is an unregulated 'jungle'.

He said because the industry is becoming 'more and more commercial', women are being fast-tracked into IVF when there are cheaper treatments that might work better.

Lord Winston accused the fertility watchdog of presiding over an unregulated 'jungle'

In other cases, women are paying for tests that could actually cut their chances of motherhood, said the Labour peer, who has long warned of the dangers of expensive but unproven fertility treatments. Lord Winston, who made his name on TV programmes such as Child of Our Time and The Human Body, said: 'IVF is being offered as a blanket treatment when there is a whole variety of other things that you could do that might be more effective. What is happening in the jungle is actually pretty frightening.

'Of course there are lots of good people doing good work but what is happening is that infertility is increasingly not being treated as a symptom. Nowadays, if you go in with a symptom of infertility, you automatically get IVF though there are many cheaper treatments that might be more effective.'

He accused the fertility watchdog of incompetence, adding that he thinks it is 'frightened of being sued and has had its day'.

Lord Winston, emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, also questioned whether women are informed that freezing their eggs does not guarantee they will have children.

Embryo selection for IVF: Lord Winston said: 'IVF is being offered as a blanket treatment when there are a whole variety of other things that you could do that might be more effective'

He told a Sunday newspaper that although egg freezing is becoming 'big business', success rates are low. 'That's not to say it shouldn't be done, provided it's safe,' he said. 'But I don't think people who are having their eggs frozen realise just how low their chances of having a baby are.'

Another expensive treatment may actually cut a woman's odds of having a baby. He said that some clinics are over-prescribing a form of checking embryos for abnormalities called PGS. He said that using the test can cut the odds of pregnancy by as much as half, yet it is being sold to 'desperate patients'.

The fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, could not be contacted for its response.