Leaked EU draft asks UK to halt foreign prisoner deportations and open youth mobility

GB News reported on what it described as an 11-page draft statement prepared by the European Union ahead of this month's reset summit with Andy Burnham's government. The channel said the document set out the EU's negotiating demands and had not been signed or agreed.

According to GB News, the draft says the UK will stop sending foreign national prisoners to the EU. It proposes an uncapped youth experience scheme allowing young people to spend up to three years studying, volunteering or travelling in the UK or the EU. EU students would pay the same tuition fees as British students, a fraction of what they pay now.

GB News said the draft includes a new deal on fishing in the Celtic Sea. It also reported possible gains for farmers, with meat and vegetables exported to the continent without red tape. The UK and EU would look for third countries to process illegal migrants, the channel said.

In the studio, Sir Bill Cash, a former Conservative MP, said the plan crosses sovereignty red lines. He argued the UK would align with EU laws without shaping them and called the process 'a re-subjugation to European law making'. Joe Meghan, a pro-rejoin activist from the European Movement, said there was a deal to be made. He stressed that the document was only the EU's draft negotiating position and that nothing had been 'signed, sealed and delivered'.

The discussion also turned on regulation and cost. GB News aired a claim that 76 EU directives and about 400 areas of food and drink legislation could apply to 92 per cent of British businesses that do not trade with the EU. It also heard that the Growth Commission estimated a net cost of up to £15bn a year from importing the EU's anti-innovation regulations.