EU Migrant Benefits Crackdown Vowed By PM

David Cameron will set out plans for a welfare crackdown on EU migrants today, warning that he will "rule nothing out" if he fails to secure the reforms in a renegotiation of the European Union.

His tough language in a speech later this morning will raise the prospect of the UK leaving the EU if other countries do not agree to the Prime Minister's demands.

They include:

:: Blocking EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits or getting social housing until they have been in the country for four years

:: Ending the practice of child benefit being paid to parents whose children live abroad

:: Stopping all benefits for unemployed migrants, and threatening to remove individuals if they are still out of work after six months

:: Tougher and longer re-entry bans for rough sleepers, beggars and fraudsters

However, hints over recent weeks and months that Mr Cameron would challenge the principle of freedom of movement with proposals for quotas are not included. That appears to be an acknowledgement that other EU countries would block the plans.

Mr Cameron will say: "People have understandably become frustrated. It boils down to one word: control.

"People want Government to have control over the numbers of people coming here and the circumstances in which they come, both from around the world and from within the European Union.

"And yet in recent years, it has become clear that successive governments have lacked control."

He will add: "If I succeed, I will, as I have said, campaign to keep this country in a reformed EU.

"If our concerns fall on deaf ears and we cannot put our relationship with the EU on a better footing, then of course I rule nothing out."

Pawel Swidlick, of the think-tank Open Europe, said: "David Cameron and his advisers have realised that, whereas in Europe there is definitely scope to negotiate changes to in-work benefits, there just wasn't any appetite to put into question the fundamental principle of free movement.

"And as our recent research has shown, actually addressing in-work benefits, which are particularly generous in the UK compared to other EU member states, which can act as a subsidy for low-paid migrants, this is definitely something which can get support both in Europe and here in the UK."

Others were less positive. Donn Flynn from Migrants Rights network said the proposals went further than was expected and were "terribly harsh".

"This group of workers have to get by on these very low wages for four years then we really have to be concerned that there will be real entrenched hardship and poverty establishing itself amongst this group," he said.