Poll: British public evenly divided over EU

As British Prime Minister David Cameron is preparing to attend an EU crucial summit in Brussels, a new poll has found that the British public is now evenly divided over a prospect for a British exit from the EU.

According to the poll conducted by ICM, 42 percent of the interviewees say they prefer to stay in the block but 41 percent announced they would leave.

The poll comes as the EU referendum bill last night passed through the House of Lords, meaning that Mr Cameron could potentially hold his vote in June next year. This is the first time since 2013 that ICM has found that voters are evenly split.

The independent polling company has in recent weeks found that the gap between the “Leave” and “Remain” campaigns is narrowing significantly.

EU membership has long been a contentious topic in Britain. Eurosceptics, who believe the UK would be better off outside the political and economic union, seek the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

The EU summit is going to be held as Cameron’s plan to curb benefits for EU migrants for the first four years they are in Britain faces stiff resistance from other leaders, who see it as discriminatory.

Experts say Cameron's hardest battle is certain to be on welfare reform. The measure affects a small proportion of Britain's total social welfare bill but is one of the four main pillars of the prime minister's strategy to renegotiate Britain's membership of the EU and then campaign to stay in the bloc.

Possible solutions to the impasse could include an emergency brake on migration into Britain, according to EU diplomatic sources.

This would allow Britain to limit migration from the other 27 EU countries if its public services are overwhelmed or its welfare system is being abused, the sources said.

Some analysts suggest another alternative could be to withdraw benefits from young Britons as well as EU migrants.

The cost of EU migrants claiming benefits in Britain has been hard to assess because the British benefit system does not systematically record the nationality of claimants.

But several studies have found that EU migrants paid more in taxes in Britain than they received in benefits over the last decade.

EU migrants accounted for 2.5 percent of benefit claimants processed by Britain's Department for Work and Pensions, according to official figures released in 2014.

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