Let’s get the deal done, says Boris on India FTA
India-UK trade increased by 28%, says the former British PM; ties will further strengthen with Roadmap 2030 finalised with Prime Minister Modi, he adds
NEW DELHI: Former British prime minister Boris Johnson on Saturday made a strong pitch for the speedy conclusion of the India-UK free trade agreement (FTA), including steps to remove high tariffs on British products such as Scotch whisky and automobiles, and to ensure mobility of Indian professionals.
“Let’s get it [FTA] done,” Johnson said several times during his speech and a Q&A session with HT’s editor-inchief R Sukumar at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, pointing to the enormous opportunities that the deal will open up for businesses and “hardpressed consumers” in both countries.
Johnson described the emergence of Rishi Sunak as Britain’s first prime minister of Indian descent as a “fantastic thing”, not just in terms of what it said about British society but also because it showed that the ruling Conservative Party – which produced three women prime ministers and the first premier of South Asian origin – as the pre-eminent party of opportunity and hope in the UK.
India and the UK missed the deadline to conclude the FTA by Diwali, which was celebrated on October 24, because of differences on several key issues, including the Indian demand for greater mobility for students and professionals and the British call for greater market access in certain areas and for lowering tariffs on items such as Scotch whisky.
“Let us finally deliver that FTA, which mysteriously seems to have developed a flat tyre since I left office,” Johnson said. Pointing to the earlier Diwali deadline, he added, “I’m not going to wait till the next Diwali before we do that free trade deal.”
While questioning whether the “Indian dairy lobby” is determined to keep out British cheese and the 150% tariff on Scotch whisky, which he described as ridiculous and absurd, Johnson asked: “Why should British consumers be deprived of good value footwear made in India?”
At the same time, it will be good for India to get better access to the UK finance and capital markets, while Britain can benefit from the talents of Indian software programmers.
“Let’s take all this to the next level, let’s get that free trade deal done because it is the height of insanity that we have beautiful British Jaguars and Land Rovers made in the West Midlands facing huge tariffs – 125% tariffs – on import into India when Jaguar Land Rover is owned by a great Indian company,” he said.
People familiar with the matter have said the India-UK FTA is unlikely to be finalised till 2023, largely because of the recent political turmoil
JOHNSON SAID THE INDIA-UK RELATIONSHIP UNDER SUNAK IS “GOING TO FOLLOW THE SAME PHENOMENAL TRAJECTORY”.
in Britain, where Johnson’s resignation in July resulted in a churn within the Conservative Party. Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, was in office for just 44 days as the UK’s shortest-serving premier in three hundred years. Following Truss’ resignation in October, Sunak was chosen as the new prime minister by the Tories.
Johnson noted that even without an FTA, India-UK trade had increased by 28% and the two sides are taking their ties to the next level in line with the Roadmap 2030 that he had finalised with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The “first results of the Modi-Johnson deal” was the approval for export of more Indian shrimps and import of more British apples, he said.
India has become the number one country of origin for overseas students in the UK and “108,000 Indian students [are] helping to support our education industry”, while British master’s degrees are recognised for academic and professional purposes in India, he added.
Asked about a realistic timeframe for the FTA, Johnson replied: “I hope it can be done as soon as possible, I really don’t know what the holdup is.” He added that the British side “should not let immigration be the problem” as there is “huge merit in having people come in from overseas”.
Responding to a question on whether the Tories were facing problems in balancing their Brexit-related promises on immigration with mobility under trade deals, Johnson said the British people are “not xenophobic or hostile to foreigners” but want a sense that the government they had elected is in control of what is happening.
Johnson said the India-UK relationship under Sunak is “going to follow the same phenomenal trajectory”.
He added, “We need each other now more than ever because as Prime Minister Modi has said, as external affairs minister S Jaishankar has said, we live in dangerous and turbulent times.”
Even if the UK and India are not drawn together by ties of love, family, trade and commerce and economic self-interest, they will be “drawn together by this fervour and vital reason that we two democracies... are forced to cope together with the irresponsible and sometimes dangerous behaviour of the world’s coercive autocracies”.
Being a democracy also helped India and the UK to bounce back faster from the pandemic, Johnson said, citing the cooperation between the two countries on vaccines and contrasting it with the situation in China, where lockdowns recur today.
Things had been very different at the start of the pandemic and everybody talked about following China’s “brilliant and ruthless” model for dealing with Covid-19 and “locking people up in filing cabinets and broom cupboards”, he said, referring to the country’s ZeroCovid policy.
“Chinese cities today are being put into lockdown and look at us here in the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, happily shaking hands and no masks that I can see, no lockdown, living advertisements we are for democracy, free market capitalist pharmaceutical companies and UK-India collaboration... It shows how much good the UK and India can do together,” he said.
He highlighted how British scientists in Oxford University developed the AstraZeneca vaccine and how the Serum Institute of India in Pune produced enormous quantities of it to protect people in both countries.
Noting that the AstraZeneca vaccines made in India were also used in the UK, he said: “I am personally the beneficiary of AstraZeneca masala, I’ve got it running in my veins. And I have not had Covid since, by the way.”
He then said: “Let me ask you – which of you had Sinovac or Sinopharm or Sputnik or one of the [vaccines] produced by the autocratic countries?”
“Well, it was our two democracies that came together to protect the human race with billions of doses of vaccines distributed around the world,” Johnson said.
Johnson said 25% of the medicines used by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is produced in India and the two countries are also working together to tackle key issues in the fields of health, climate change and green technology.
“When the leader of a coercive autocracy embarks on a disastrous policy in which his ego is fatally engaged, there is nothing and no one that can stop him. And that’s why democracy matters,” he said, adding that it is the duty of the media to shine a light on the decisions of leaders and to hold them to account.