Sunak focused on ‘quality, not speed’, of trade deals
‘UK-INDIA PACT MUST INCREASE INVESTMENT AND JOBS IN BOTH COUNTRIES’
THE United Kingdom will not “sacrifice quality for speed” in agreeing to post-Brexit free-trade deals, prime minister Rishi Sunak said last Thursday (17), as he looks to ink accords with India and the United States.
Sunak told MPs last Thursday that he would only agree to deals he felt were worthwhile, having discussed the issue with world leaders at this week’s G20 summit in Bali. “I met (Indian) prime minister (Narendra) Modi, where we reviewed progress on our forthcoming FTA (free trade agreement),” Sunak told the House of Commons.
It was the first meeting between Modi and Sunak, since he became British prime minister in October.
Earlier last Wednesday (16), Downing Street said, “They looked forward to the agreement of a UK-India free trade deal, which has the potential to unlock investment and increase jobs in both our countries, as well as expanding our deep cultural links.” Modi said “robust ties” with the United Kingdom were of great importance to India.
“We discussed ways to increase commercial linkages, raise the scope of security cooperation in context of India’s defence reforms and make people-to-people ties even stronger,” Modi said on Twitter after the meeting.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs said the leaders discussed collaboration in trade, mobility, defence and security.
Sunak was questioned by Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer and his own Conservative Party MPs on the timeline for the completion of the agreement with India. “Without negotiating all these things in public, I am pleased that the majority of the substantive negotiation conversations were concluded by the end of October. We will now work at pace with the Indian teams to try to resolve the issues and come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion,” the prime minister said.
However, there is some dissent within the UK government about how many visas London will offer Indian nationals as part of the agreement.
“Our relationship and partnership with India are much broader than just a trading relationship. I was pleased to discuss increasing our security cooperation with India,” Sunak told MPs.
“We also announced the mobility scheme to enable young people from India to come here and young Brits to go there, which is a sign of what is possible. Such exchanges are positive both for our countries and for the young people who benefit,” he said. The prime minister referred to the new UKIndia Young Professionals Scheme launched at the summit last week, which relates to 3,000 new reciprocal visa offers annually for under-30s – dubbed as “good for both Indian students and British students who want to go back and forth”.
On the new scheme, Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi questioned the move against the backdrop of “dog whistle” anti-immigrant rhetoric from home secretary Suella Braverman’s “incendiary remarks against international students that so incensed people in India”.
The Labour leader also attacked Braverman for putting the FTA deal with India in doubt after indicating that she would not support it, with reference to her controversial remarks on Indians being the largest group of visa overstayers.
“The home secretary is rightly focused – there is nothing ‘dog whistle’ about it – on clamping down on illegal migration, which the British people rightly expect and demand, and it is something that she and this government will deliver,” Sunak said in defence of his cabinet minister.
If it is agreed, the agreement would be the first of its kind New Delhi would have made with a European country. The UK is keen to capitalise on Brexit to strike international deals and under former prime minister, Boris Johnson, trumpeted a slew of agreements with countries outside the European Union.
But former environment minister George Eustice last week said the country’s deal with Australia, struck last year by Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, “gave away far too much for far too little in return”. He also said Truss, who was trade minister at the time, had set “arbitrary targets” for concluding a deal.
Sunak told MPs he had also discussed Britain’s accession to the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) with the prime ministers of Japan, Canada and Australia. “When it comes to trade deals, whoever they may be with, what I won’t do is sacrifice quality for speed,” Sunak said.
“It is important that we take the time to get trade deals right,” he added.
However, Sunak did say that “there was incredible excitement” among CPTPP leaders about the UK potentially joining, and that “we will continue to conclude those negotiations as quickly as possible.”
Britain formally applied to join CPTPP, whose 11 members account for 13.4 per cent of global GDP, last year.
But prospects of an imminent deal with the United States appear to be non-existent given the current political situation in Washington, with the UK instead focusing on its deals with individual American states.