LONDON: Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday that restricting welfare payments to EU workers was an “absolute requirement” of his efforts to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the bloc, as he unveiled a new crackdown on immigration.

The Conservative leader’s comments came as new figures dealt a further blow to his long-held promise to reduce net migration to below 100,000, showing it rose from 209,000 in 2013 to 318,000 last year.

In a speech in London, he outlined new proposals to control immigration that will feature in a bill to be announced in next week’s Queen Speech, where the newly elected government will set out its agenda.

The proposals include making it a criminal offence to work illegally in Britain, a measure that would allow the police to seize wages from undocumented workers and increase pressure on the firms that hire them.

Cameron also repeated a promise to restrict the right of European Union workers from claiming unemployment and in-work welfare benefits — a controversial measure given the bloc’s rules on freedom of movement.

The premier has promised to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU before holding an in-out referendum by 2017, and will start face-to-face discussions at a summit with EU partners in Riga on Friday.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has said he is ready to work with Cameron but insists key principles such as freedom of movement are non-negotiable.

“I support free movement,” Cameron said Thursday, but argued that “under the free movement rules, national welfare systems can provide an unintended additional incentive for large migratory movements”.

“Changes to welfare to cut EU migration will be an absolute requirement in the renegotiation,” he said.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 268,000 EU workers came to Britain in 2014, up 67,000 in a year, out of a total of 641,000 new arrivals.

Critics have questioned whether Cameron’s welfare changes would really help to reduce the influx of workers.

He pointed to the fact that 86,000 EU citizens last year arrived without a job offer to look for work, with the implication that some were drawn by unemployment benefits.

The prime minister’s proposals to clamp down on illegal immigration are also unlikely to affect the official statistics, although they may prove popular.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play