Student visas not priority, India told
KEMI BADENOCH will not discuss India’s demands for hundreds more student visas, she said last night, as she flew to Delhi to “reboot” stalled trade talks.
The International Trade Secretary said she hoped to reach an “amazing deal” well before the next election.
She said Britain was on track to become the first G7 nation to sign a trade deal with India. It would be the UK’S largest by far, post-brexit.
India has indicated in the past that it wants to see thousands more students given visas to enter British universities as part of a deal. But Mrs Badenoch said she had no plans to discuss the issue during her negotiations, because student visas were issued by the Home Office and her focus would be on time-limited visas for highly-qualified workers.
“Student visas are a separate Home Office responsibility,” she said.
“They wouldn’t come into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Often FTAS get dragged into things that aren’t to do with trade… Making sure we don’t let business talks turn into Home Office talks is key for me.”
A government source later said that Ms Badenoch was not entirely taking student visas off the table, because the issue could be discussed separately.
Around 120,000 Indian students were granted student visas in the last year - overtaking China as the largest nationality.
Rishi Sunak last month announced a new Uk-india migration pact to allow up to 3,000 degree-educated Indian students aged 18 to 30 to stay for up to two years.
It is believed Delhi wants a further expansion of the scheme. But the visas are controversial because many students bring their families with them, fuelling immigration further.
It was reported two months ago that the talks with India had been derailed by comments made by Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, about Indians
outstaying their visas, but Ms Badenoch denied that was the case, and they were working closely together. She said: “There is an amazing deal to be done in a year. India is likely to be the third largest economy in the world by 2050.
“No deal like this has been done before.it’s going to be great for the UK.”
But she added that she did not want to set a firm deadline because “negotiations are very dynamic”.
Her trip comes as prominent British firms including Pret A Manger, Marks & Spencer, Tide and Revolut plan expansions into India. She will meet Piyush Goyal, India’s trade minister before start of the sixth round of talks, on cutting tariffs and opening opportunities in India for UK financial and legal services. In the interview, Mrs Badenoch admitted that talks had stalled because of the instability brought about by the resignation of Liz Truss, the former prime minister.
“The talks came to a pause for a few reasons, and they were political” she said. “One is that when there is instability in a government it’s very difficult to get anything done… We had that, and India had elections in some of the key states, so it just wasn’t a good time to carry on negotiating.
“I am … rebooting the talks. It was going well but as with all negotiations it gets to the tricky bits.”