Prime minister accepts Electoral Commission’s recommendation that referendum should ask if Britain ought to leave or remain in EU

Anti-EU campaigners have received a boost after David Cameron accepted a recommendation by the Electoral Commission to change the wording of the referendum question.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, welcomed the revision, which will mean voters are asked whether Britain should remain a member of the EU or should leave the EU. The government had intended to ask voters simply whether the UK should stay in the EU, prompting the Electoral Commission to warn that this could favour the status quo in the referendum.

Farage tweeted: “Electoral Commission recommendation forcing government to change question is first kick back against Cameron’s attempt to rig referendum.”

EU referendum's reworded question welcomed by experts and campaigners Read more

The decision by Downing Street, which is to introduce an amendment to the EU referendum bill to incorporate the new wording, means that, unlike the Scottish independence referendum, there will not be yes and no campaigns.

Instead, they are likely to be labelled in and out campaigns. The pro-EU camp is already dubbing itself the in campaign.

Jenny Watson, the chair of the Electoral Commission, who will act as the chief counting officer in the referendum, said research had shown that asking voters only whether Britain should remain in the EU could potentially encourage a vote for the status quo. The commission also heard complaints from anti-EU campaigners that the proposed wording could favour the pro-EU side.

Watson said: “Any referendum question must be as clear as possible so that voters understand the important choice they are being asked to make. We have tested the proposed question with voters and received views from potential campaigners, academics and plain-language experts.

“Whilst voters understood the question in the bill, some campaigners and members of the public feel the wording is not balanced and there was a perception of bias. The alternative question we have recommended addresses this.”

Downing Street said that it would accept the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. The government had inserted the original wording into the bill to comply with a recommendation by the Electoral Commission, which had raised concerns about the wording in a Tory backbencher’s private member’s bill on the referendum introduced in the last parliament.

The prime minister’s spokeswoman said: “We will accept the Electoral Commission’s recommendation and we will table an amendment to the bill accordingly. Our approach on the bill and on the question was to follow the Electoral Commission’s previous recommendation on this. They had looked at the issue in the context of the private member’s bill and, as they acknowledge in their report today, they had previously provided an assessment and set out what the question could be and that was the approach we followed.”

The change came as the prime minister prepares to resume his EU negotiations with visits on Friday to his counterparts in Lisbon and Madrid. Government sources said that he had no plans to change his four publicly stated proposals.

These are to impose a four-year ban on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits; to give Britain an opt-out from the EU’s historic commitment to create an ever closer union; to give EU national parliaments a greater chance to block EU legislation; and to secure protections from the laws of the single market for non-eurozone members.

The FT reported on Tuesday that the prime minister has abandoned plans to demand a full UK exclusion from EU employment laws. However, one government source said that the prime minister had never considered such a move on the grounds that he needed to stick to his original plans as outlined in his landmark Bloomberg speech on the EU in January 2013.

He has already added one extra element – curbs on EU migrants – and believes that he cannot add any further demands for fear of alienating the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was briefed in detail on his Bloomberg speech.