UK-India Free Trade Agreement

Stephen Gethins Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins (Arbroath and Broughty Ferry) (SNP)]

May I thank the officials who have been working with the Minister on this trade deal? I am sure he will not mind me doing so. These trade deals are difficult, and they take a while to come to fruition. I would also like to acknowledge the reduction on whisky duty—although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) rightly highlighted, that has to be matched by domestic policy towards the whisky industry. That being said, I know that distilleries such as Arbikie in my constituency, which trade globally, will be absolutely delighted with that measure. It would be helpful, as we have heard from the Opposition Front Bench, to know more about some of the safeguards that have been put in place in relation to food and drink; the Minister has mentioned some, and I hope he will mention a little more later on.

This is exactly the kind of deal that we were told only Brexit Britain could deliver—that only if the UK left the European Union would we be able to deliver these kinds of deals. Except that the EU has gone and done exactly the same. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that all that stuff about Brexit Britain was absolute nonsense, and that the EU has been able to do exactly the same!

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

It would be remiss of me not to give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman.

[Jim Allister]

What the hon. Member has not mentioned is that it took the EU 20 years to get a deal with India. It took the United Kingdom three.

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) says that I have not mentioned that, but I had just started. Of course, he represents a part of the United Kingdom that we have all been told gets the best of both worlds by being in the single market and the customs union. Imagine: the best of both worlds, as we have been told by Conservative and Labour Members!

On that point, will the Minister tell the House why the EU has been able to remove more tariffs on its EU goods? There is also—I wonder whether he will talk about this—a stronger commitment on climate sustainability as well as trading, including elements dealing with climate change. Of course, on bilateral income, although the EU is a bigger market and therefore the figures will be bigger, we know that the percentage for EU savings is also higher. I know that the Minister used to be a European enthusiast, although since he has gone into government that has dissipated somewhat.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

I will give way one last time.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that being inside the EU would have given us much more bargaining power? The reason the EU has a better deal with India is because it has collective bargaining with so many countries. We are a lone wolf, a little island, and countries agreeing trade deals with us know that they have got us over a barrel.

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[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Member is right. The UK as a second-tier power has left itself poorer, as the Minister, to his credit, has acknowledged, as did the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard); it is just a pity that the Liberal Democrats do not agree with me and the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) that we should rejoin.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Stephen Gethins]

I did say that the previous intervention would be my last, but I really ought to give way to the Minister.

[Chris Bryant]

If the hon. Member is in favour of collective bargaining, surely he is in favour of Scotland doing its collective bargaining within the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Gethins]

But if only we were listened to! We feel about as listened to as the leader of the Scottish Labour party at the moment, and that is not terribly well listened to. I am a great believer in a 21st-century model of Union based on the treaties—one that listens to its different member states, makes its members richer and gives them more rights, rather than a pretty out-of-date and outmoded 18th-century version of the Union. I am glad the Minister has given me the opportunity to make that point.

The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) rightly talked about services and other issues. The EU has negotiated higher levels of freedom of movement. On services—again, it would be remiss of me not to talk about the higher education sector, and I wonder whether the Minister will mention that when he sums up. He will be aware of the huge impact that trade with India has on our higher education sector. In Dundee, for example, there was a huge amount of student recruitment from India—more than from the entire European Union, although post Brexit that fell off and we were left more isolated. There were 810 Indian students in 2022-23, and 365 in 2024-25—a decrease which led to that university’s significant financial crisis. It is not alone in that within the higher education sector.

The former principal, Shane O’Neill, talked about the “negative impact” of UK policy, and Universities Scotland has said that the loss of dependants and the “toxic” rhetoric around migration in the UK have had detrimental impact on the higher education sector. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I still do a little bit of teaching at the University of St Andrews, and I have to mention the value that comes from having more international universities. It is not just about the value that comes from the income; it is the value to the richness of the teaching regime, through our students having access to others from across the world, and to our research. It is exceptionally important. I wonder whether the Minister will touch on that point, because UK policy has had a hugely detrimental impact on my constituency, particularly in relation to the financial challenges faced by the University of Dundee, and I am truly sorry to say that we saw the toxic legacy of the Conservatives’ migration policy continued by the Labour party in government.

The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North spoke about scrutiny. If we were Members of the European Parliament we would get full access to the trade agreements, so will the Minister look at the way that the European Parliament deals with issues such as voting rights, scrutiny and publication, and see what examples of good practice the UK Parliament could pursue?

I am glad that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) has not taken up the offer of being across the road at No. 10 and that he is here. I am pleased that he raised his constituent, Jagtar Singh Johal —he made a great case and, if he does not mind me saying, continues the good work done by Martin Docherty-Hughes. I think we all want to wish Mr Johal a happy birthday, but we all sincerely hope that he will have a happier birthday this time next year. I thank the hon. Member for his work, and I add my voice to those asking the Minister to respond.

Finally, a number of hon. Members have raised the question of Russian oil. Will the Minister set out what is happening with Russian oil, what conversations were had with Indian officials and whether there are any refineries that could be targeted as part of the broader sanctions process?

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[Jim Allister]

I will deal with the fact that the EU just signed one.

As I said in an intervention, I was a Member of the European Parliament when Peter Mandelson was a Trade Minister, and I well remember him trumpeting the fact that the EU was going to negotiate a trade deal with India. That was in 2007. It took the EU until 2026 to cobble together a trade deal, such is the pace at which it proceeds. The post-Brexit United Kingdom has been able to reach this deal since 2022, so although EU fantasists seek to draw a parallel, what they say does not stack up.

[Stephen Gethins]

If Brexit has been so great, why on earth has nobody else followed the UK out the door?

[Jim Allister]

I suspect that one of the reasons is that the EU made the process a punishment beating of the United Kingdom, in respect of Northern Ireland, so that any other country that was thinking of daring to assert its sovereignty would be frightened out of it. I will return to the impact of this deal on Northern Ireland in a minute.

It is good to see the tariffs fall. Across the board, tariffs on UK products going to India will generally fall from 15% to 3%. However, I have a question for the Minister. From what I read in this deal, it seems that once the deal is confirmed, there will be an immediate, uninhibited flow of Indian goods that come under the deal into the United Kingdom, but it seems that the reciprocal movement of goods will be on a progressive basis, rather than immediate. Perhaps the Minister will explain to the House why that is. Why do the Indians get immediate access, but we get truncated and delayed access? We would all be interested to hear that.

I note that the deal reduces the horrendous tariffs on whiskey, but they are still at a very high level of 75%. I have Bushmills in my constituency, which provokes my interest in this issue. It provides good jobs. Ultimately, we are told, over 10 years, the tariff might reduce to 40%, but that is still a whopping tariff, though, yes, it is much better than 150%.

I want some clarification from the Minister on a point relating to vehicles. A portion of this agreement deals with access to the Indian market for United Kingdom vehicles, but that access is capped. May I ask explicitly if that includes buses, or is it just cars? It is very important that it includes buses, because in my constituency we have Wrightbus, which produces quality buses, and we also have buses produced in Falkirk in Scotland, and elsewhere. It is important that there is access across the vehicular market, that it includes buses, and that it is not unreasonably capped. Perhaps the Minister can explain the why of the cap.

I come now to the absurdity of the implementation of this deal, the Windsor framework and the protocol that afflicts Northern Ireland. Under the Windsor framework, we in Northern Ireland are left under the EU’s customs union. That means that any imports from India come to Northern Ireland subject not to the tariffs set forth in this deal, but to EU tariffs. Our exports, such as Bushmills whiskey, go out under the deal, but imports are blocked from having whatever tariff applies for the rest of the United Kingdom. We are subject to the EU tariffs; that is a common feature across all the deals that have been done and will be done.

[Jim Allister]

No, it most certainly would not. In modern times, there is abundant opportunity to develop a scheme, with the assistance of modern technology, that would allow for mutual enforcement when it comes to something as fundamental as international trade.

If a company in my constituency wants to sell buses to Germany—I will stick with buses—it must make them to the standards of the German customer. If a German company wants to sell buses to the United Kingdom, it must make them to the standards of the United Kingdom. That is the fundamental starting point for trade. We create a circumstance wherein each country enforces the standards of the other, and we thereby protect the market of the other. To underwrite that, we introduce a criminal sanction saying that if any company in the United Kingdom breaches those rules, there is criminal liability, and we will look for reciprocal arrangements. That is the essence of mutual enforcement. That would work, but instead, we have sacrificed sovereignty over part of our country to a foreign jurisdiction, namely, the EU. We have said to it, “We will subject all our economy to your rules, which we do not make and cannot change,” and we did that utterly unnecessarily.

The real bite of unfairness in that is that many companies in Northern Ireland do not trade outside the United Kingdom—many do not even trade outside Northern Ireland—but they are caught by the same rules as if they did. They must make and market their goods as dictated by the foreign jurisdiction. They need none of the protections necessary for the EU single market, but they face the imposition of unnecessary restrictions.

The issue really reduces to this: are we a United Kingdom? If we are a United Kingdom, the laws of this nation should be made by this United Kingdom, not by a foreign jurisdiction, which imposes on my constituents in 300 areas of law. These are laws that we do not make and cannot change. We are a supplicant rule taker. That is so fundamentally wrong. The Minister will give me—and has given me before—a rather trite response: “Oh, that is all because of Brexit!” Sorry, but it is not. It is because we in Northern Ireland did not get Brexit; the Windsor framework denied us Brexit. It kept us in the EU’s customs union and single market, whereas the rest of the United Kingdom escaped. That is why we have this absurd situation where we do not get the full benefit of these trade deals. As a representative of my constituency, I ask other Members of this House: why are my constituents less important or entitled in these matters than those of every other Member from Great Britain?

We then have some in this House, such as the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins), who want us all to rejoin the customs union so that we cannot make trade deals, whether with India or any country. We could then have only the deals that someone else makes for us—it is such absurdity. Those are the fundamental issues that I would like to see addressed.

As for getting the best of both worlds, that is a fantasy for Northern Ireland, and there is a very simple reason why. We might have access to the EU market—as GB does through its trade deal with the EU—but we forget that to bring all our goods and raw materials from our main market in GB, they have to pass through an international customs border, with paperwork, checks and extra costs.

[Stephen Gethins]

That is Brexit’s fault.

[Jim Allister]

It is not Brexit but the Windsor framework. We did not have a Brexit, and that is what causes the Irish sea border. There is this fantasy that Northern Ireland is in some special position, but we have the worst of all worlds. Although we were told that, under the Windsor framework, we would become the Singapore of the west, not one extra job has been created by foreign direct investment, which proves what a fantasy it is. The reason it is a fantasy is that no company will set up on the basis that they could sell into the EU—as they can from GB—and forget about the fact that the raw materials will be subject to an international border and the associated extra costs, which more than cancels it out. I have probably tested your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will leave it there.

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[Chris Bryant]

I am keen not to give way again, because there is not much time and I have to answer all the questions that I have already been asked.

Turning to legal services, of course we would have much preferred to have been able to secure legal services as part of this deal. We have a very strong legal services sector in the UK—it is excellent. I was with the head of the Law Society in Riyadh last week, celebrating some of the changes and opportunities that are happening in Saudi Arabia, for instance. The difficulty is that, as the Indians made very clear throughout the whole of the negotiating process, law is a noble profession. It is very specifically understood as such within the Indian constitution, so that would have required significant changes to primary legislation in India, and that was not something we were able to achieve.

Similarly, we would have preferred to have been able to secure a bilateral investment treaty, but we stand ready to start that process whenever India would like to do so. I am glad that we have a digital trade chapter, because so much of the trade we do internationally is now digital, and lots of other arrangements do not end up with that provision.

On services, the way we transacted this deal means it is supported by the Federation of Small Businesses, HSBC, Standard Chartered, EY, TheCityUK and Revolut, and I do not think they think of the deal as “soggy poppadoms” at all; I think they think of it as a fine tandoori.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) and several other Members referred to Kashmir, and the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) gave us some shocking stories about the situation there. I was once the curate in High Wycombe, which has a large Kashmiri population. They have felt many of the issues relating to Kashmir ever since the 1940s. It has been a long-standing British position that India and Pakistan need to come to a settlement of their agreement. For the purposes of the CETA, the core text chapters define India’s territory as set out in India’s constitution, but emphasise that that is without prejudice to territorial sovereignty or compatibility with international law.

An important point that nobody has referred to is that Pakistan enjoys preferential tariff rates when trading with the UK under the developing countries trading scheme, which offers significant preferential access. Approximately 94% of Pakistani goods are eligible for 0% tariffs, and that runs out for India three years after the FTA enters into force. The deal is not silent, as it were, on the relationship between the two.

Some Members have said that there is nothing in the FTA about human rights. First, that is not true; there are provisions. It is also not true to say that none of it is legally binding. The whole agreement is legally binding, and review processes are built into it in a way that makes it possible for us to monitor human rights. I have to say, the EU deal does not enter into human rights issues either—traditionally, it does not. We want every element of how we engage with another country to reflect the values we want to protect, including opposition to the death penalty, to forced labour and to so many other things.

[Stephen Gethins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Member does not mind.

A lot of that toolkit lies outside trade. It lies with the human rights monitoring that our high commission in India does regularly. We raise all the individual issues that have been referred to.

[Stephen Gethins]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the hon. Member, because I can never resist him. We used to be on a Select Committee together.

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[Stephen Gethins]

I have great respect for the Minister, but he talks about the EU deal not covering human rights. We are all covered by the European convention on human rights, but that umbrella does not exist for countries such as India. That is important, especially because the Minister’s party and my party are committed to remaining within that framework.

[Chris Bryant]

I am as committed to remaining within the European convention on human rights as I ever was, as are the UK Government. It would be a derogation of our international standing around the world if we departed from it. That is one of the many reasons that I oppose not only the Conservative party, which seems to have gone doolally in recent years, but those Members who were elected as Conservatives and have now joined another political party.

I want to make it absolutely clear to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East and to others who have referred to these issues that Kashmiri Britons are of course listened to. The kind of stories that we have heard concern us.

The hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) pushed in the other direction on Brexit, but he made a good point with which I completely agree. I might slightly disagree with him about the precise amount of harm that Brexit has done to our trade opportunities in the UK, but I note that a very large number of UK businesses no longer export to the European Union, and that is a massive failure for the UK. That is why we are keen to secure a better deal with the European Union, and that is what we are working on. He talked about sanctions and Russia. I am appearing before the Select Committee on which he sits, so he gets many bites of the cherry. I say to the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), that when I come to talk about trade sanctions in the next few weeks, I will be happy to go into the specific details that he has raised on Russia.

I gently say to the hon. Member for Witney that I get a bit irritated when I hear Lib Dems talking about Russia, because I remember being in this House in 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea. I know he was not in the House, but the Liberal Democrats were part of the Government. It was not just that Government but many other Governments who essentially allowed Putin to take Crimea with impunity, which has left us with some of the problems we have today. I completely agree with him that we need to debilitate the Russian system as much as possible. We have introduced sanctions on entities, including India’s Nayara Energy Ltd, to ensure that we disrupt Russia’s energy revenues. We are undermining the shadow fleet wherever possible. We have announced a further 500 sanctions.