David Cameron faces another humiliating defeat on his promises to stop paying child benefits to European Union migrant workers whose families live overseas.
The prime minister was defeated two weeks ago on his election manifesto pledge to halt the payments altogether and faced a second retreat yesterday.
A draft deal, accepted by Mr Cameron as a compromise, proposed allowing migrant workers to send child benefit and tax credit payments to their children abroad but at levels adjusted to the local cost of bringing up a family.
After bruising talks in Brussels yesterday, the Conservative leader will be forced into a further retreat, conceding that the benefit reductions will not apply to the 1.2 million EU migrant workers already in Britain.
Eastern European countries, Poland, the