The Premier League has responded to growing political pressure by revealing plans to introduce minimum quotas of home-grown players next year in an effort to safeguard the future of the England team.

In a further move that will be welcomed in Whitehall, as well as in the offices of Fifa and Uefa, the league plans to introduce financial incentives for clubs to encourage the development of players at youth level from the start of the 2010-11 season.

Yesterday’s announcement from Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, echoed the thoughts that he had expressed in a letter to Andy Burnham, the Sport Secretary, after recent criticism of the league. Burnham is understood to be happy about Scudamore’s response, which may also please Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the presidents of Fifa and Uefa respectively, who have been critical of the league’s foreign influence and its resistance to their attempts at regulation.

Scudamore believes that the new measures, to be finalised at a meeting of the club chairmen on June 4 and 5, will encourage the advancement of young English players. In reality, there will be no distinction between English youngsters and those imported to clubs’ academies before the age of 18, but Scudamore believes that the rule change can only help to raise standards.

In a letter to Burnham, Scudamore robustly defended the Premier League from criticism on a number of issues before writing: “Reflecting the need to encourage the development of local talent and to be confident that the future supply of England-qualified players is at least as good as now, our clubs have indicated in principle their support for a home-grown player quota to be applied to Premier League matches.

“Measures under active consideration include: restrictions on foreign loans to bring them into line with regulations for domestic loans; the development of youth development financial incentives; constraints on the moves of under-18s; reforming the domestic compensation system and improvements to youth development and coaching.”

Speaking at the Premier League’s headquarters yesterday, Scudamore explained: “If there is a way of incentivising clubs to bring players in at 17, 18, 19 and keep them on as first-team players, we want to do that. If you have a toss-up over a home-grown player, we want the clubs to have an incentive to keep the home-grown player, where at the moment you can have the argument that it’s cheaper to bring in a player from outside.

“We don’t want to place artificial limits on who can and cannot come into the league. Philosophically, what we’re doing is asking, ‘Is there more we could be doing to develop English talent, which would negate the need to go abroad and look for talent? Can we do anything to make sure the home talent is as good as it can be?’ ”

Scudamore and the club chairmen have decided that the answer to those questions is yes, but he made clear that they have no intention of accepting Blatter’s controversial “six plus five” proposal, under which every club’s starting line-up would consist of at least six players from that country. Scudamore said that the plan is “unworkable and illegal”.

Instead, he would favour something along the lines of the quota system that exists in the Champions League, where clubs are required to name a squad of 25 players, including a minimum of four home-grown players (which means products of their own youth academies, even if imported from overseas) and another four home-grown players who can fall under the “locally trained” category — for example, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick at Manchester United.