Brussels: Details of benefits deal to be secret until after UK poll

BRITAIN will be kept in the dark about key details on how migrant benefit curbs will work until after the referendum, Brussels officials admitted yesterday.

EU leaders are set to agree tomorrow that David Cameron will be allowed to reduce payments of child benefit and tax credits to foreign workers. But crucially he will not be told by how much before the poll.

As part of the deal, Mr Cameron will win the right to cut payments to EU workers whose children remain in their home countries.

The Government will be allowed to introduce a system with 28 rates of child benefit – one for each EU state – according to the standard of living in the relevant country.

But EU officials yesterday said they would not disclose how these rates would be calculated until after a referendum.

Mr Cameron is also set to be given an ‘emergency brake’ to cut payments of inwork benefits, such as tax credits, for the first four years that an EU migrant is in the country. At the start they will receive no payments, but the rate of increase will also not be disclosed until after a referendum.

A spokesman for European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said: ‘The sequence of events in case of an agreement at European Council would be that people will vote on the agreement, and then if there is a decision to remain this would be the moment for the EU to put forward secondary legislation to implement the deal.’