Theresa May has come under pressure from business leaders to open Britain’s doors to more skilled Indian workers and students to boost the economy and help secure a post-Brexit trade deal.
As part of the prime minister’s three-day trip to India aimed at strengthening economic ties, May attended a tech summit in which Sir James Dyson said the government needed to “change its mind” over the issue.
In an interview with the BBC he suggested increasing the number of visas issued to skilled Indian workers and allowing students to stay for longer after graduating – “because we are going to be 1 million engineers short in coming years”.
Karan Bilimoria, the founder of Cobra beer, who was also a speaker at the Delhi event, added: “The irony is coming on a trade mission with a view of laying the grounds for a trade agreement with India if Britain leaves the EU, while at the same time continuing to remain unwelcoming towards India when it comes to immigration.”
May said she was willing to look at some aspects of the Indian experience of applying for visas to enter Britain. However, in return she wanted India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to help with efforts to send home Indian nationals who have overstayed their visas and are living illegally in the UK.
“The UK will consider further improvements to our visa offer if at the same time we can step up the speed and volume of returns of Indians with no right to remain in the UK,” said May during her first bilateral visit outside Europe, which is part of an effort to lay the groundwork for future trade deals.
A government source said any liberalisation of the visa system would only apply to the process, including the experience in British airports, with no relaxation of the criteria required to obtain access to the UK.
May hopes to establish a key trading partnership with India. As part of the talks in Delhi, Modi underlined a desire for the British government to make it easier for Indian students and highly educated workers to travel into the UK.
The government source said the UK had responded to Indian demands by unveiling two new schemes during the trip to make it easier for business travellers to obtain visas and enter Britain through the e-passport channels. She said there was a willingness to find other ways to liberalise the visa scheme, including the possibility of cutting the costs for Indians.
But May told reporters she believed the system was sufficiently generous in terms of overall numbers, arguing that Britain issued “more work visas to India than … US, Australia and China put together”. She stressed that nine out of 10 applications were successful.
The prime minister’s decision to demand to return Indians overstaying their visas received a sceptical response from some of the Indian journalists covering the event.
Priyanka Tikoo, editor and bureau chief of the Press Trust of India, said it appeared that May was “looking for more trade but less people”. She argued that any trading deal with India would only be established if it was a “win-win” for both countries, and warned that the statement on Indians being returned would “not go down well”.
The issue of Britain tightening the rules made headlines in India last week after the government said IT workers applying for tier 2 visas would need to meet a significantly higher salary threshold. That followed Britain cutting the period of time for which graduates from India could remain in the UK.
“If you see what is happening in the UK vis-a-vis Indians, you look at the difficult travel conditions for professionals travelling to the UK, especially IT professionals, and the UK has made it more difficult for students to stay on and look for a job there,” Tikoo said.
The government source argued that there were a number of other possible concessions that could encourage Indians to enter a trade deal, including technology and skills transfers.
The issue also triggered discussion in the UK, where the Institute of Directors welcomed the trade talks with India but warned that migration was an important factor. “The prime minister must recognise that labour mobility and visas are key to deepening trade for a services-based economy like the UK,” said the head of trade policy at the IoD, Allie Renison, who suggested that students ought to be taken out of May’s net migration target.
Sam Bowman, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, agreed that May ought to be more flexible on migration. “India’s position that a trade deal with Britain must include looser migration controls on Indian migrants is good news for Britain. A free trade deal with India that also made it easier for skilled Indian workers to come to Britain would be win-win for us, and be a real coup by making the UK the first major economy to strike a deal with India,” he said.
Brexit supporters told voters with links to Commonwealth countries that leaving the EU would allow an immigration system that was fairer towards people from their countries. However, if May is to meet her promise of cutting net migration to the tens of thousands, she will need to reduce migration from across the world.
Bowman argued that British people were relaxed about skilled workers and students arriving in Britain, and said the cap had become an “albatross hanging around the government’s neck”.
Another group, WPI Strategy, argued that India could demand the scrapping of subsidies for British farmers to enable a deal.
Sean Worth, director at WPI Strategy and a former Downing Street adviser, argued that there were good reasons why trade talks between the EU and India had previously stalled.
“Theresa May has the chance to achieve something that the EU hasn’t been able to do for nine years – a trade deal with India. The prime minister will, however, be confronted with exactly the same problems as her European counterparts. Her trade negotiators will have to fight tooth and nail not to give ground on the movement of people, but this could mean putting the future of UK farming at risk,” he said.
However, he said the benefits would be huge.
The economist Jonathan Portes said it was a “fantasy” to expect India to suddenly give Britain everything it wanted in trade terms. “They’ve never hidden the fact that as far as they’re concerned they regard access to the UK labour market for skilled workers, through the work permit system, as a key priority.
“I don’t think there’s remotely any prospect of a free trade agreement with them.”