New Home Office statistics reveal that 397,000 non-UK nationals received handouts in February 2013 – a rise of nearly 110,000 from 288,720 in the five years since 2008.

But the true number could be even greater as the details are not yet available for the past 12 months.

Ukip spokesman Tim Aker said: “This shows the Government has virtually no control over our borders.

“It shows how broken our migration system is – and the longer this is allowed to go on the more chaotic the situation will get.

“We need to be outside the EU in order to have full control over our borders so we know who is in the UK and who is deserving of benefits.”

It was revealed that net UK migration rose to 212,000 in the year to September 2013, pushing it further away from Prime Minister David Cameron’s target of below 100,000 by 2015.

The net flow – the numbers moving to the UK minus those leaving – soared from 154,000 the previous year.

The increase was driven by a huge growth in the number of EU citizens flocking to Britain.

There are now 5.6million claiming working-age handouts in Britain – roughly 16.5 per cent of the 33.6million working population.

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Millions of pounds from Britain’s controversial overseas aid budget is being diverted to fund housing and benefits for asylum seekers living in the UK.

The Home Office, one of the departments hit hardest by the Chancellor’s spending cuts, is quietly siphoning off around £10million a year.

The cash, which is enough to put 200 police officers on the streets, would  otherwise have to be found from the department’s own budget.

Officials insist the raid on the swollen £11billion international aid budget falls within international rules for development spending. Crucially, it counts towards the contentious Government target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid.

The news that not all the money is being sent overseas was welcomed by backbench Tories, who have criticised generous spending by the Department for International Development (DfID).

Andrew Percy, Tory MP for Brigg and Goole, said: ‘If we do have to provide this support within our international obligations it is right it should come from the foreign aid budget.

‘It should not come from the Home Office budget which should be spent on policing, immigration and border controls.’

The Mail has long highlighted some of the controversial ways aid is spent. Recipients have, for example, included India and Nigeria, which have their own space programmes.

The aid money being taken by the Home Office pays for accommodation for asylum seekers and their families during their first 12 months in the UK. It also funds cash support, or benefits.

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Laszlo Andor, one of Europe’s most powerful technocrats, is a committed socialist determined to drag the UK through the courts over welfare laws.

Mr Andor, 47, holds one of the most powerful positions in the European Union as Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, a job that provides a £212,000 salary and generous benefits.

His role gives him political, legal and bureaucratic muscle — and Mr Andor, probably the most Left-wing of the EU’s 28 commissioners, is not averse to using it.

Now he is taking on the British Government over attempts to curb welfare payments to EU migrants. His report into benefits tourism, which we disclose today, effectively concluding that the practice was a myth, can be seen as part of the battle.

But it is his decision to take action at the European Court against the UK which opens him up to accusations of “throwing a hand grenade” into an already incendiary debate about Britain’s continued membership of the EU.

Mr Andor’s spokesman last week insisted that the Commissioner was – despite his actions – “a great Anglophile” and not a former communist, despite him once launching a defence of life in the Soviet Bloc.

The Commissioner has lived in both Manchester and London, and is even partial to a particular Kent-brewed ale, his spokesman added.

Mr Andor was born in Hungary and went to school in Zalaegerszeg, 140 miles west of Budapest.

He studied economics at the then Karl Marx University in Budapest, before gaining a British Council fellowship to study for an MA in development economics at Manchester University in 1993.

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Migrants are to be banned from claiming benefits for their families back home, the Prime Minister said yesterday.

Tough new rules will end the scandal of more than £55million a year in handouts leaving Britain.

Making clear his outrage at the system, David Cameron warned that if he could not strike a deal with other EU countries now he would seek to secure the change in his membership renegotiations.

Benefits and tax credits claimed by European migrants for children who live in other countries cost the British ­taxpayer more than £1million a week, ­according to estimates.

Campaigners calculate that UK child benefits worth £36.6million a year go to 40,000 children living overseas including non-EU Iceland and Norway, together with £18.6million of child tax credits.

Two thirds of all child benefit sent abroad goes to Poland. The payout is £20.30 a week for the first child and £13.40 for others where neither parent earns more than £50,000 a year.

Tackling the issue marks another front in Mr Cameron’s attempts to curb EU immigration by reducing the attractiveness of the British welfare system.

Government efforts have intensified in a bid to allay public concern over migration curbs being lifted on Bulgarians and Romanians last week.

Mr Cameron told BBC1’s Andrew Marr show that letting working immigrants claim child benefit here for families back home was not “right”.

He said: “Well, I don’t think that is right and that is something I want to change. It is a situation that I inherited. I think you can change it.”

Change would take time, because other European countries had to agree, he added.

But other European leaders also thought it wrong that someone from Poland who came here and worked hard should get our child benefit for family back at home. The Prime Minister added: “I don’t think we should be paying child benefit to family back in Poland.

“To change that you’ve either got to change it with other European countries at the moment or potentially change it through the Treaty change I’ll be putting in place before the referendum we’ll hold on Britain’s membership of the EU by the end of 2017.”

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Pregnant foreigners are flying to Britain in droves to take advantage of free NHS care.

More than 300 women who were about to give birth were stopped at Gatwick in a two year period, according to a government report.

Most of the women received treatment on the NHS after being deemed to close to giving birth to return home.

The total exploiting the health service is thought to much higher, as Gatwick has a limited number of flights from countries with the highest rate of so-called health tourists.

Despite airlines usually not allowing mothers-to-be who are more than 36 weeks pregnant to fly, the women were able to gain entrance to the UK by using forged doctors notes which hid how far along they were.

The already stretched health service is set to come under even more pressure next week when labour market restrictions are lifted and thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants are predicted to flood the UK.

Mr Duncan Smith said it is too easy for migrants from the European Economic Area to pass a habitual residency test to prove they live in the UK and enable them to claim benefits.

He said the Government has met with stiff opposition from Brussels as ministers attempt to make it harder for so-called benefits tourists to abuse the system in the UK.

Ministers are currently exploring ways of limiting migrants’ access to social housing, healthcare and legal aid.

Responding to an urgent question from Labour MP Frank Field in the Commons, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I agree with you, there is somewhat of a crisis over this. I absolutely agree with you. For the last two years I have been fighting a rearguard action over what was left to me by the last government.

“The reality is that it is all right for [Labour] to moan but let’s put the facts as they are – I inherited a habitual residency test which simply isn’t fit for purpose. We are trying to tighten that up dramatically and I am being infracted at the moment by the European Union for doing that.

“But you are absolutely right, and I am with you on this, to describe this as a crisis.”

Mr Duncan Smith said that at present EU migrants must pass a habitual residency test but to do so they do not need to prove that they plan to stay here for any period of time.

It was also possible for EU migrants to claim child benefits from the UK, even if their offspring lived in their native country.

By claiming self-employed status, migrant workers could claim tax credits from the UK, he told MPs, adding that, under the Labour government, net migration stood at 2.2 million people, which is larger than the population of Birmingham.

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