UK-India Free Trade Deal Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Trade
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
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UK-India Free Trade Deal
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
I am very grateful to my noble friend for highlighting our childhood friendship and exposing me as a Europhile—I am not sure if that was quite so necessary in my opening gambit. But I am a free trader above all things, and I think he encapsulates very well the views of this Government in terms of the benefits that free trade brings.
I would like to make an important clarification, and I am happy to have further discussions with noble Lords about this. The free trade agreement with India does not include sections on immigration; that is a completely separate matter. What we are talking about here is mobility visas for businesspeople, and we require those opportunities as much as Indian companies do. I remind noble Lords, and my noble friends behind me, that Indian companies in this country employ literally tens and tens of thousands of people. The opportunities we have to swap intellectual property—our human capital, which is what we will export to India in exchange for the huge opportunities that it will present to us—insist on, and ensure we should have, an element of toing and froing. That is how we benefit through the brotherhood of trade and the brotherhood of nations. But I must separate those two points; I think that is very important.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
On behalf of the International Agreements Committee and as its chair, I welcome the Minister to his place. He will have read our report on the India free trade agreement, so I will ask him two questions. The first is the one that he did not answer from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on how this sits alongside the close relationship that India has with Russia, which goes against our current interests. Secondly, facilitation payments are common in India and are well below modern international business standards. What are the Government doing to tackle this great problem in our business relations with India?