Paul Nuttall, on behalf of the EFD Group. – Madam President, in southern Europe we hear horror stories of 60% youth unemployment in Greece and Spain. In my own country we have a million young people out of work. Why is this happening?

It is happening because EU rules and regulations on employers are making it difficult and expensive for them to hire young people. That is one point, but let us talk about the real elephant in the room here. The other problem is the fact that we have been forced to open our borders to 500 million people across the European Union. They have every right to come and work in the UK, to undercut young people and drive down wages.

In a few months’ time, on 1 January 2014, we will be opening our borders to 29 million more people from Romania and Bulgaria, two countries which are far poorer than the UK. Already statistics are showing that the number of Romanians and Bulgarians working in Britain has risen by 26% this year.

So here we are, debating the EU strategy. Well, I can tell you it is a failure and will continue to be a failure until the European Union allows us to implement sensible border controls.