David Cameron has passionately urged other EU leaders to support his “reasonable” proposals for far-reaching curbs on welfare benefits for migrants.
Britain’s prime minister said lower EU migration would be a priority in future negotiations on the UK’s membership and said he would “rule nothing out” if he did not get the changes he wanted.
Under his plans, migrants would have to wait four years for certain benefits.
Britain’s Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, said the PM had “no credibility” on immigration.
In a long-awaited speech in a factory in the West Midlands, Cameron said he was confident that he could change the basis of EU migration into the UK and therefore campaign for the UK to stay in the EU in a future referendum planned for 2017.
But he warned that if the UK’s demands fall on “deaf ears” he will “rule nothing out” – the strongest hint to date he could countenance the UK leaving the EU.
The main proposals in the speech are dependent on Cameron remaining in power after May’s general election.
The Conservative prime minister proposes to stop EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits, such as tax credits, and getting access to social housing for four years.
He wants to bar migrants from claiming child benefit and tax credits for children living outside the UK while also restricting the right of migrants to bring family members into the UK.
He favours removing migrants from the UK after six months if they have not found work.
Cameron seeks to stop EU job seekers from claiming Universal Credit.
He favours speeding up the deportation of convicted criminals, imposing longer re-entry bans for beggars and fraudsters removed from the UK and stopping citizens from new countries joining the EU from working in the UK until “their economies have converged more closely” with existing members.
Cameron said migration had benefited the UK, saying he was proud of the “multiracial” nature of modern Britain.
But he said immigration levels in recent years, which he said were the largest in peacetime, had put unsustainable pressure on public services.
He said the UK public’s concerns about levels of EU immigration over the past decade are “not outlandish or unreasonable” and the changes will create the “toughest welfare system” for migration in Europe.
“We deserve to be heard and we must be heard,” he said. “Here is an issue which matters to the British people and to our future in the European Union.
“The British people will not understand – frankly, I will not understand - if a sensible way through cannot be found, which will help settle this country’s place in the EU once and for all.”
Cameron said he wanted the package to be adopted across the EU, acknowledging that it would need changes to existing treaties, but that if it was not, he would seek a new arrangement applying only to the UK.
