• Word has spread that the spot is the place to find ‘off-the-books’ work
  • Dozens of migrants are picked up throughout the day by workmen in vans
  • Shops have hired guard dogs to keep the men from approaching customers for work

It was the week Britain was branded a ‘honeypot nation’.

And as if on cue, hundreds of migrants swarmed to a plush London suburb for their share of the spoils.

In extraordinary scenes throughout last week, up to 200 men from Romania and Bulgaria gathered each day in Stanmore, searching for cash-in-hand jobs.

Word has spread that the spot – between a B&Q store on Honeypot Lane and a bar and restaurant named The Honeypot – is the place to find ‘off-the-books’ work. Dozens of migrants are picked up throughout the day by workmen in white vans.

Migrant workers gather outside a pub called The Honeypot looking for work. Dozens of the men are picked up throughout the day by workmen in white vans

Migrant workers gather outside a pub called The Honeypot looking for work. Dozens of the men are picked up throughout the day by workmen in white vans

Dressed in jeans, woolly hats and hoodies, the earliest risers parked in nearby residential streets at 6am before about half a dozen were picked up by a van at the corner of the B&Q car park

Last night, residents told the Mail they are furious their neighbourhood has become a makeshift illegal job centre.

Shops have hired guard dogs to keep the men from approaching customers for work and the local MP has pleaded in the Commons for something to be done to police the situation.

‘The men sit on the little wall at the end of my garden, so I have to walk past two or three of them every day,’ said Harsha Vyas, who lives on Honeypot Lane.

‘It’s scary because they’re watching my house. At 7.15am there are a couple on the wall, two or three behind the bush and more near the B&Q, and ten or 15 of them down the end of the road. It’s very daunting.’

Shops have hired guard dogs to keep the men from approaching customers for work

Shops have hired guard dogs to keep the men from approaching customers for work

The 51-year-old added that groups of men have been gathering for the past six months.

When the Mail visited Stanmore last week, dozens of migrant workers could be seen congregating.

Dressed in jeans, woolly hats and hoodies, the earliest risers parked in nearby residential streets at 6am before about half a dozen were picked up by a van at the corner of the B&Q car park. As more arrived, groups soon spread to outside the Selco builders’ warehouse next door and on to the pavement.

When the vans stopped coming, the workers shouted at passing cars: ‘Job? Job? Why not?’

Eventually they started to disperse, until just the oldest and largest were left after 2pm.

The farcical scenes came in the same week senior Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said that Britain has become Europe’s ‘honeypot’.

‘We’ve become a honeypot nation in the European Union,’ he said on Tuesday. ‘One of the things keeping low pay suppressed is the endless supply of cheap labour coming in from the EU8, the Eastern European countries, the recent entrants to the European Union.

‘And most people come to this country unaccompanied… but they’re able to claim benefits to support their families back home.’

Figures published by the Open Europe think-tank show that low-wage migrant workers from Poland can double their basic pay by coming to the UK, and new arrivals from Bulgaria are able to increase their pay by 250 per cent.

Speaking in the Commons last Thursday, Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East said: ‘Every day in my constituency, 200 eastern European men assemble outside the B&Q on Honeypot Lane.

Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East, has raised the problem in the Commons

Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East, has raised the problem in the Commons

David Cameron takes tough stance on immigration

‘They tout their services aggressively for casual labour… take money in cash and have no deductions for tax or national insurance for the work they do.

‘What steps can be taken to ensure that people are employed properly and that the necessary deductions are made to support state aid?’

Jo Swinson, the minister for employment relations, assured him the case would be investigated.

Meanwhile B&Q said it is ‘working with local police to discourage the use of the area outside the store as a meeting point’.