Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, is being accused of “hypocrisy” after apparently carrying out a violent U-turn in the Lib Dems’ policy on EU immigration.
In an article for the Financial Times, he calls for a crackdown on welfare benefits for EU migrants to Britain.
It underlines the hardening of attitudes among all the mainstream political parties to EU migrants claiming benefits and it has led to him being accused of hypocrisy by at least one FT readers, who commented: “Cannot imagine Clegg saying that a year ago. Ukip is scaring him, what a hypocrite he is…”
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Clegg had already proposed that EU migrants should not be able to claim child benefit for children not living in the UK. But the deputy prime minister goes further today, saying migrants should be barred from claiming the new universal credit until they have worked in Britain for six months. The benefit would then only be payable for a maximum of six months.
He also calls for most migrants to be barred from in-work benefits such as tax credits, saying they should only be paid to people working the equivalent of a 35-hour week on the minimum wage - a threshold of £227 instead of the current £153.
Simon Hughes, former deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, denied that it was a U-turn, insisting on Radio 4’s Today programme that his party had always supported curbs on benefits for EU migrants.
“We have argued for a long time we need to disassociate the general freedom of movement around the European Union - which we support and believe is a good thing - from the argument that that means that benefits should automatically flow as a consequence,” he said.
However, it is only six months since Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable was saying he was “intensely relaxed” about large-scale EU immigration to Britain. And Clegg’s crackdown on benefits could have the effect of curbing the number of EU migrants coming to Britain by removing the magnet effect of tax credits and other benefits.
Pro-Europeans like Clegg insist that is jobs not benefits that attract EU migrants to Britain - but it is THE big attraction according to the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart. She told MPs last month that the French port town is besieged by asylum-seekers from Africa and Europe “prepared to die” to reach Britain and that UK benefits are the “real magnet”.
The timing of Clegg’s article only 12 days after the Lib Dems were virtually wiped out in the Rochester and Strood by-election – their candidate received just 349 votes – suggests he wants it to be clear the Lib Dems are in step with the Tories and Labour, both of whom - under pressure from Ukip - are now agreed that benefits to EU migrants need to be curbed.
But what is perhaps more significant is the publication of the article before David Cameron makes his long-awaited speech on immigration, which could come this week.
Clegg is drawing a “red line” for the PM, saying he will oppose caps or quotas on migrants from Europe, which would break the EU’s cherished principle of free movement of people.
“If the prime minister asserts that a Tory government will introduce caps or overall quotas on the number of EU migrants coming here,” writes Clegg, “we will find ourselves in the worst of all worlds.
“Ukip will say it is not enough. Europe will say it is not possible. Once again the British people will be plunged into a cycle of wild over-promising and inevitable disappointment, their scepticism confirmed.”
Will Cameron now shift his own ground from caps and quotas to a temporary “emergency brake” to contain big inflows, as advocated by former Tory PM John Major? Watch this space.
