PM concedes: We haven't nailed down benefits brake

DAVID Cameron yesterday left the door open to EU migrants claiming benefits within months of arriving in the UK after he admitted details of his ‘emergency brake’ had yet to be nailed down.

The Prime Minister was forced to try to defend the plan amid warnings that it could actually lead to the number of incomers going up, not down.

The one-off, seven-year emergency brake was agreed following 30 hours of gruelling talks in Brussels on Friday. The rest of Europe agreed to a new regime where EU workers will have payments of tax credits ‘phased in’ over a period of four years.

But the PM yesterday conceded that the details of how the new system would work, and how quickly this phasing-in would occur, had not yet been agreed with the rest of the continent.

Meanwhile, it was claimed that the brake could lead to a short-term surge in EU migrants coming to Britain.

Experts pointed out that, over the past six months, the Prime Minister had advertised across Europe the fact that Britain offers handouts to low-paid workers.

With the new regime not expected to come into force until mid-2017, large numbers are expected to flock here to take advantage. Anybody who arrives in Britain just before the rules are changed will keep their tax credits in full.

On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Mr Cameron was asked how long it would be before migrants started to receive benefits. He did not give a full answer – even when it was suggested migrants could get 90 per cent of their benefits restored after just six months in the UK.

Mr Cameron said: ‘What we’ve said is that you get nothing to start with and you don’t get full access till after four years. And now we have to settle the details and put all that in place, which we will. What we know is you get no benefits to start with and you don’t get full access for four years. No more something for nothing. Everyone has to pay in before they get out.’

Yesterday, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith questioned whether the emergency brake would make a difference.

He said there had been a ‘glaring need’ to win controls on free movement, but this had not been achieved. Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘We originally wanted to have a brake on migration, not just on benefits, and the EU point blank refused to discuss it.

‘It is deeply troubling that the details of what the EU has offered us on migrant workers’ access to benefits won’t be set out until after the British people have voted.’

Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: ‘This deal will do virtually nothing to reduce mass immigration which is the public’s greatest concern.’

Labour MP Frank Field, a cochairman of the cross-party group on balanced migration, said it would be ‘amazing if there wasn’t’ a spike in immigration before the brake is applied.

Jonathan Portes, a former Downing Street economic adviser, said the benefits part of the EU deal was ‘primarily symbolic’.

He added: ‘The Prime Minister has spent the last six months engaging in the biggest, most publicised awareness campaign about the UK benefits system in Poland [and other countries].

‘So it’s possible some people will come in advance of the brake because they know after that they’ll be missing out.’

Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn said the evidence suggested the emergency brake would not cut migration.