Dole for 1m migrants after they go home

Poles and others who have worked in Britain are entitled to claim dole payouts for up to three months.

And it will be well worth their while – UK unemployment benefits are worth more than the average wage in eastern Europe.

The scam is perfectly legal under controversial EU legislation, first highlighted by the Daily Express in July.

Polish job centres in Britain are even running master classes to help returning migrants to claim as much as possible from the welfare system.

Polish Employment Office vice-director Renata Cygan said yesterday: “Why should we pay? We work on the assumption that if someone worked abroad they should claim benefits there.

“That’s why we are organising information meetings about how to seek benefits abroad.” Adam Panek, director of the Employ-ment Office in Rzeszow, said: “It was once rare, but now there’s not a week goes by when we don’t get people applying, especially over the past two months.

“People say that in the UK or Ireland there’s no point looking for work any more.

“Either their contracts are finished or it just doesn’t make financial sense.

“Salaries are shrinking and the cost of living is rising.” There was outrage in Britain last night that UK taxpayers were paying to keep migrant workers who had returned home.

Mark Wallace, of the Tax-Payers’ Alliance, said: “A lot of people in Britain will be shocked to learn that benefits paid out of the British welfare state are funding people to live the high life in Poland.

“But it’s hard to blame the Polish job centres for seeing an opportunity to get as much as possible out of the soft-touch British system.”

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: “This just goes to show that we cannot have political union with a country like Poland.

“It’s outrageous that at a time when hard-pressed Britons are facing the misery of house repossessions and losing their jobs they are also subsidising a life of luxury in Poland.”

Unemployed workers are supposed to make every effort to look for a new job in their homeland.

But staff in job centres across Poland are aware that returning migrants ensure they get all of their three-months British benefits entitlement. Halina Krzyzak, of the Krakow Employment Office, said: “It’s never happened yet that anyone has taken a new job before all their rights to draw overseas benefits have been used up.”

Thousands of returning mig-rants are refusing to take up vacancies until their £700-a-month British benefits run out. The state handout is almost six times the Polish dole payment of £121 a month.

More than one million migrant workers are expected to return to eastern Europe as they lose their jobs in the British economic crash, the Government’s equalities watchdog chief, Trevor Phillips, claimed last week.

Almost all will be entitled to some kind of British state hand-out following EU legislation to “harmonise” social security payments.

Last night a Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman said: “You cannot receive this form of Jobseekers Allowance unless you have been paying National Insurance contributions, and the individual would only be eligible for up to three months.”