I knew as Home Secretary that continuing negotiations would open the way to more immigration
The Telegraph: Wednesday 7th May 2025
“I get it,” said Keir Starmer, surveying the smouldering wreckage of his party’s local election performance.
Except he plainly doesn’t. On his first day back to work after voters delivered a clear rebuke, the Prime Minister returned to Westminster and promptly signed away yet another piece of our sovereignty, this time, via a trade deal with India that quietly but deliberately opens Britain’s labour market to tens of thousands more low-wage workers. With the stroke of a pen, he has undercut British workers, loosened migration controls, and signalled – once again – that mass immigration is a price he’s more than willing to pay for a warm headline and a lukewarm diplomatic handshake.
At election after election, British people have made their views known with increasing clarity: they want immigration brought down – drastically. They voted Conservative in 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019 on that promise. They voted to leave the European Union to regain control of our borders. And when those promises were broken, they voted to remove us from office. What clearer signal could be sent?
Yet here we are. The message from Downing Street is as garbled and self-defeating as ever: “Yes, we understand the concerns. Yes, we’ll get a grip. But here’s a new scheme to bring in more people from abroad.”
The UK-India trade agreement may bring benefits in the long term – estimated at £5 billion by 2040 – yet in practice, it does so at enormous cost and represents a missed opportunity. Firstly it is likely that the measures agreed will add to our already sky-high migration numbers.
The “mobility clauses” are so generous even though Indian nationals already dominate our visa system, with the number of Indian nationals receiving a work visa rising from 43,000 in 2019 to 160,000 last year. Indeed, one in five foreign workers coming to the UK today is Indian. During the last round of negotiations, when I was Home Secretary, this was the main reason why I objected to the deal. Now, inexplicably, the government has caved: offering tax breaks, relaxed rules, and visa liberalisation as a bargaining chip for marginal trade concessions.
This is not a trade strategy. It is a surrender.
Of course, we want trade. Of course, we want investment. We want to sell our whisky, our financial services and our innovation. But trade deals must be in the national interest, and no trade deal is worth it if the price is a de facto open-door policy.
Secondly, the new agreement exempts Indian workers from paying National Insurance in the UK. This gives them an automatic wage advantage – up to 23 per cent cheaper to hire than a British worker doing the same job. That’s not a level playing field. That’s institutionalised undercutting.
And to those who argue that the Double Contribution Convention is reciprocal, in practice the number of Indian professionals likely to benefit in the UK far exceeds the number of UK professionals working in India because of the greater incentives for Indians to work in the UK. A quick look at comparative salaries tells you all you need to know: the average Indian worker earns £4,000 per year. The motivation to come here is overwhelming, and now formalised in trade policy.
We are told this is fair – after all, we have double taxation treaties with the EU, Canada, and New Zealand. But those countries already have similar wages and labour standards to our own. The logic doesn’t hold. There is no precedent for such open-ended access from a vastly different economic context.
This is not reciprocity. It’s naivety. The Indian delegation are savvy negotiators. They know what they’ve wanted for years – visas – and they have been unwilling to concede much else, for instance UK access to India’s famously protectionist legal services sector. Until now, we held firm. But this Prime Minister – so eager to appear internationalist and progressive – has given them what they wanted. And in return? A reduction in whisky and automotive tariffs.
It’s hard to avoid the feeling that Britain has given up immigration controls in return for 0.1 per cent GDP growth by 2040.
Let me be clear. I believe in free trade and I love India. Indian blood runs through my veins. I believe in its rise, respect its people, and admire its astonishing economic growth – 8.2 per cent GDP growth last year. But admiration does not mean acquiescence. Our job is to serve our own citizens first. That is what governments are for.
Starmer may think this will endear him to internationalists, but it is a slap in the face to Red Wall voters who switched to the Tories in 2019 because they thought someone – finally – was going to stand up for them. He has learned nothing from our collapse because he doesn’t get it.
