London: UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is backing plans to curb access to welfare benefits for EU migrants, clearing the way for a coalition crackdown and pre-empting Prime Minister David Cameron, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
The Liberal Democrat leader urged Cameron to focus on restricting welfare for migrants and warned him not to alienate other EU leaders by challenging the principle of free movement.
Clegg wants to restrict migrants’ receiving in-work benefits like tax credits and child benefits, the newspaper said. “If the prime minister asserts that a Tory government will introduce caps or overall quotas on the number of EU migrants coming here, we will find ourselves in the worst of all worlds”, Clegg wrote in an opinion piece in the newspaper.
This latest move by Clegg, is an attempt to assure the British voters that “rules are fair” and also wants to keep Britain’s borders open to European workers, the FT said.
Cameron is planning to pull back from proposing quotas or caps and is looking at temporary “emergency brake,” to contain big inflows, the newspaper said, citing sources.
Cameron also promised to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership before holding an in/out referendum by 2017 if he is re-elected in a May 2015 national election.
