A so-called rebel amendment to the UK Immigration Bill, which would ban Romanian and Bulgarian migrants until 2019, has been proposed and gaining ground.

Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP who masterminded the amendment, told the Sunday Telegraph that there was “great concern” among his colleagues about a repeat of the previous influx of eastern European migrants, when there were no restrictions and one million moved to the UK.

The expected influx of tens of thousands of job-seekers from the two countries next year would be a major strain for the economy “when we have still got a lot of people desperate for work who can’t find it” in Britain, he said.

David Davis, Cameron’s former shadow home secretary, who added his name to the amendment in the past week, said Romanians and Bulgarians would want to move to Britain to “triple their wages”.

“By deferring our own influx [of Romanians and Bulgarians] by a couple of years, we would not be the main attraction. They would go somewhere else," he said.

Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP for Clacton, said the government must “see common sense” and accept the amendment.

He said he was “very doubtful” that the Prime Minister’s proposed reforms to benefit rules and freedom of movement inside Europe would be adequate to prevent rising immigration.

Philip Hollobone, another MP backing the reform, said the Prime Minister’s plan to restrict benefits was “a step in the right direction” but both the government and Labour were failing to listen to the “overwhelming” view of the public, “which is that we don’t want to open our borders to Romania and Bulgaria”.

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