By George Eustice

There is much that concerns me about the Prime Minister’s EU reset.

The concession on fisheries represents a one-sided gift to the EU of approximately £2.5bn of fishing opportunities over the next decade.

Having made the concession, the PM should at least have withheld signing it until the EU delivered its side of the bargain. Instead, fisheries were signed away in isolation.

Furthermore, the commitment to slavishly follow EU law on food and farming rules will undermine the UK’s ability to be a global leader in science and technology, and the removal of border checks on imports increases the risk of animal or plant diseases.

However, there is one element of the EU reset where the Prime Minister is absolutely right. There should be a basis for cross-party agreement, and the Government should have much more self-confidence.

That is on establishing a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), or Youth Experience Scheme (YES), as it is now described. The last Conservative Government strongly supported the idea of a YMS with the EU, but could never quite see a political route to land one, given domestic public opinion and concerns about the EU’s rapacious nature in such negotiations.

The ability to create a YMS is technically reserved for EU member states, but the EU issued a diktat to members not to negotiate with the UK individually. Therefore, a YES now forms part of........

© LBC