George Osborne, the highest-ranking member of David Cameron’s Cabinet. Photo: Reuters

Prime Minister David Cameron plans to make finance minister George Osborne his lead negotiator as he speeds up his push for concessions from the EU before a planned referendum on Britain’s membership of the bloc, the Sunday Times newspaper reported yesterday.

European leaders lost no time on Friday in offering Cameron talks on EU reform, bidding to ease uncertainty about Britain’s future in the bloc after the Conservative party won a parliamentary majority on Thursday.

The Sunday Times said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond would back up Osborne – who was made the highest-ranking member of the Cabinet after Cameron on Friday – and that both ministers would visit Berlin and Brussels as part of Cameron’s first 100-day plan.

On Friday France’s Socialist president Francois Hollande invited Cameron to Paris once he had formed a government.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU’s new chief executive who sees scope for reform short of major treaty changes, told the triumphant British Conservative: “I stand ready to work with you to strike a fair deal for the United Kingdom in the EU.”

Cameron has promised he will try to reclaim powers from the European Union before holding a long-promised in-out referendum by the end of 2017, alarming many business leaders who worry about reduced access to Britain’s main export markets.

Much of Cameron’s renegotiation plan remains unclear but he has said he wants to make it harder for newly arrived migrants to claim welfare benefits.

The European Commission is working on a package of proposals on labour mobility due by the end of 2015. It aims, among other things, to tackle concerns in richer states like Britain, Germany and the Netherlands over poor migrants from other parts of the EU taking advantage of more generous welfare systems

Britain’s PM wants to make it harder for migrants to claim welfare benefits

“We now wait to see what the British want,” an EU official said yesterday. “The rest will depend on that.”

Several countries have told Britain not to push for outright curbs on the freedom of workers to move around the bloc which would require changes to EU treaties. France’s state secretary for Europe, Harlem Desir, reiterated that position yesterday. But Cameron is under pressure from within his party to push for big changes to Britain’s membership of the EU and some Conservative lawmakers favour an EU exit.

The UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants Britain out of the EU, won nearly 13 per cent of the vote in the election, although it has only one seat in Parliament. As well raising questions about Britain’s place in the EU, Cameron’s planned referendum could also have implications for the future of the UK.

Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon repeated yesterday that her party could demand another referendum on Scottish independence if Britain voted to leave the bloc against Scotland’s wishes.

“I think there would be significant opinion in Scotland that said we had to relook at the issue of independence,” she told BBC television.

Sturgeon said she wanted the rules of the referendum to state that each of the four constituent countries in the UK would have to vote to leave the EU for it to happen.

An opinion poll published earlier this month showed 52 percent of Britons would definitely or probably vote to stay in the EU against 32 per cent who would definitely or probably vote to leave.