Why are we paying child benefit in Poland?

From: Telegraph
Here's a puzzle for you: what are we doing paying benefits for children who do not live in Britain, and may have never visited our shores? The Treasury says it cannot put a figure on the amount, but the best guess is that about £20 million in child benefit was coughed up by British taxpayers last year to support almost 38,000 children living in Poland.

It's hard to blame people who come to work in Britain for claiming benefits for children they have left behind. In Poland, for example, the government pays only a quarter of the amount offered by the Treasury. But we do criticise our Government. Children living elsewhere in the European Union qualify for benefits from those governments, just as children living in Britain get benefits at British levels. It makes no sense to hand our taxpayers' money to Poles living in Poland.

The Treasury blames the European Union, whose rules derive from a patently false belief that all member economies are at the same level. They are not; all the regulations do is encourage people from poorer EU countries to go and work in richer ones, such as the UK, which will pay more generous benefits to their children back home. The result is irrational and unjust – and yet another issue on which the Government should stand up to the EU, and refuse to abide by its ridiculous diktats.