The complacency of the government towards the vast scale of immigration from Eastern Europe has been graphically exposed by Foreign Office documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Memos from Britain's embassy in Warsaw to Foreign Office bosses in London openly mocked claims that hundreds of thousands of Poles would flock to the UK after the country was granted entry into the UK.

Ministers claimed at the time that just 13,000 people would come to Britain when the borders were opened.

In fact more than 700,000 immigrants from the former Soviet bloc have arrived in Britain since 2004 - around half of them from Poland...