David Cameron has signalled that he will press for further concessions from Brussels after playing down evidence of a breakthrough in his effort to stop EU citizens claiming welfare on arrival in the UK.

The prime minister said he was encouraged by signals from the European commission that it was prepared to offer new “emergency brake” powers to allow the UK to ban migrants from within the EU from claiming working family tax credits and child benefit for up to four years.

But, speaking to BBC Scotland after his flight from Aberdeen to see the commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in Brussels was delayed by Storm Gertrude, Cameron said there was still a long way to go before he would agree a deal.

He said he was confident he could fix the problem he says affects child benefit claims but was prepared to wait until next year if the EU offer was not strong enough before staging the referendum on EU membership.

“We’ve made progress,” Cameron said. “There’s going to be a lot of hard negotiation, a lot of hard talking, but it’s encouraging that what I was previously told was impossible is now looking like it’s possible.

“But I wouldn’t agree to something unless it has the force and the weight that we need to solve the problems that we have. I’m prepared to be patient. We don’t need to have our referendum until the end of 2017 but we’re actually seeing the European Union responding to the issues put on the table by Britain, and that’s encouraging.”

He told Good Morning Scotland that the commission proposals on blocking in-work benefits and child benefit claims for EU migrants “remains on the table and I’m encouraged that ideas are coming forward that have some force, but we’re not there yet. They’re not yet strong enough.”

Cameron says he is confident he can fix the problem he says affects child benefit claims. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Hinting at the areas still to be resolved, he added: “And the question with these breaks and ideas, it’s very important how they’re pooled, how long they last, how much strength they have, and those are all of the things that I will be talking about in Brussels.

“But we’re making progress but in those sorts of negotiations you’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to be tough and you’ve got to wait for the right deal. And I’m not going to rush it, I’m going to wait for the right deal for Britain. Because the prize here is so enormous.”

Cameron will also hold talks with Martin Schulz, president of the European parliament, as he continues his diplomatic push before a meeting of European leaders on 18 February.

The prime minister cancelled a trip to Scandinavia on Wednesday to attend the hastily scheduled meetings. On Sunday he will host Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, for dinner at Downing Street.

Downing Street sources say both sides are nearing agreement on the issue that has been the most contentious sticking point in Cameron’s campaign to rewrite the terms of Britain’s EU membership. Both sides have been deadlocked over a plan to insist that all EU workers must earn above a threshold salary before they can claim in-work benefits.

But Eurosceptics have already said the expected deal would not be enough to keep many MPs or the British public from voting to leave the EU in May’s referendum.

On Friday the veteran MP John Redwood dismissed the emergency brake proposal as a “bad joke” that would not be acceptable to Conservative MPs. “That proposal is an insult to the United Kingdom,” he said. “It’s not a serious offer. We need to take back control of our borders and we need to be able to control our own welfare system. That falls well short of that.”

He told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “It says that we have to beg in extreme circumstances for the permission of the rest of the EU to temporarily make payments we don’t want to make. It’s just simply a bad joke.”

Downing Street has said talks are at a sensitive stage but the sources confirmed that an agreement was in sight. It is hoped, they say, that the government will be given powers to halt EU migration if it puts excessive stress on social and welfare systems.

Dominic Cummings, a senior figure in Vote Leave. Tory MPs are reported to have clashed with him. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty

The new rules being negotiated would apply to all EU member states, not just Britain, and, crucially, authority over whether the brake could be used would lie with the governments of individual EU member nations and not with the EU in Brussels.



Rather than suspending EU immigration into Britain, the proposed mechanism would permit host governments to freeze welfare payments for employed newcomers for up to four years. Senior EU sources said the timeframe was not yet settled.

Nick Herbert, the founder of Conservatives for Reform in Europe, told the Today programme that he would support a deal if it addressed the “unnatural draw” of Britain’s benefits system.

“We know that EU migrants can come to our country and claim straight away in contrast to other countries,” Herbert said. “They are able to top up their wages with benefits and this is acting as an unnatural draw. Tackling that would be an effective way of balancing the numbers. What the public wants to see if the effective action.”

The main group fighting to pull Britain out of the European Union was reportedly facing splits on Thursday night. According to the Independent, Tory MPs have clashed with Dominic Cummings, a senior figure in Vote Leave. In a further development, a board member of Vote Leave has threatened to resign.

MPs confirmed that there was a row over Cummings’s

insistence that Vote Leave should not join up with other Eurosceptic groups such as Leave.EU, which is closer to Ukip. Both want to achieve official designation with the Electoral Commission as the main Out campaign group, which would entitle them to public funding of more than £500,000.