A brake? Yes, but the EU will control it

THE emergency brake sounds tough and was yesterday hailed as a ‘significant breakthrough’ by Number 10 – but it is likely to have little i mpact on t he number of EU workers pouring in. The brake will not apply to the free movement of people. Germany, among other states, long ago made it plain this would be unacceptable.

Instead, it will relate only to the payment of certain benefits to EU citizens. Specifically, migrant workers will not be able to claim tax credits for the first four years they are in the UK.

In one sense, then, it is a repackaged version of the Prime Minister’s original referendum demand to block EU citizens from getting handouts for the first 4 months they are here. But the crucial difference is that it will not be permanent.

The brake will be enforced only if Brussels agrees the numbers coming to the UK are too high and are putting too much strain on public services.

Eurocrats agree that the current level of net migration from within the EU is too high at 1 0,000, though disagreements remain over how quickly the brake can be implemented after the referendum.

Government insiders say the brake will be structured in such a way that it does not apply to British workers.

But when the net migration rate falls, the brake will be removed.

This in itself poses a series of question to which there are currently no answers.

Chief among them is would benefits immediately become payable again, once the brake was lifted? Or would an EU worker who was already in the UK still have to wait for four years?

Most crucially, what level of net migration does the EU consider too high?

Given that David Cameron remains committed to reducing net migration from both inside and outside of the EU to the ‘tens of thousands’, surely anything above 100,000 would be politically unacceptable.

In any event, critics say that the brake will fail to reduce the pull factor to Britain. This is because of the introduction of a new ‘living wage’ of £9 by 2020 and changes in the personal tax allowance, which will sharply hike the basic pay of low-paid workers.

For a migrant worker on the minimum wage with no dependents, the drop in wages if tax credits were stripped away would be less than £ a week.

Weekly take-home pay would continue to be 156 per cent higher than in Poland and 353 per cent higher than in Bulgaria.

A senior official at the Office for Budget Responsibility has suggested limiting migrants access will do little to stem the flow. Asked what the impact might be, Sir Stephen Nickell told MPs ‘not much’. Some ministers are also scathing.

One Government insider said: ‘This does nothing to address the main issue: the numbers coming in and the fact we don’t have control of our borders.’