UK-India Free Trade Deal

Viscount Waverley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I greatly appreciate the noble Baroness’s question. I thank her for all support she has given us in the department to ensure that we have a very powerful exchange and that we work very closely with her and her committee. I hope she will feel that I am fully available to her to ensure that she is thoroughly apprised of our activities around all free trade deals.

It is important that we are negotiating a free trade deal with India, and it is important to note, when it comes to the noble Baroness’s question about Russia, that we work with all our international partners, including India, to co-ordinate the international response to Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine. We encourage all our partners to support international efforts to counter Russia’s flagrant aggression and violation of the United Nations charter, and to avoid any actions that might undermine this. It is important that we stress our position in those words.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, I too pay due regard to and thank all our representatives in India, including those in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. I have recently returned from that country, and I left with an undeniable assessment that there is a firm need for this country to have a strategic relationship with India. We need to run to keep up. One area I can identify in particular is the supply chain, given our issues with China. There is a real role for India to fulfil that position not only for the UK but globally, along with Turkey and Brazil, for example, so that supply chain issues can be diversified to the benefit of the world at large.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for his point and I completely agree: the opportunities we see there are phenomenal. If we can find a powerful way to access this market, we will astonish ourselves with the wealth that we will create and the additional opportunities that we will have to control our destiny. When I was there last week, I came across a mobile phone company that had 400 million subscribers and a car company that wanted to sell 30,000 cars in one year and instead sold 100,000 in half an hour. As has rightly been said, there are opportunities for this nation. It is a millimetre away from escape velocity to become one of the greatest economies in the world. The state of Tamil Nadu will have an economy bigger than the UK’s, we think, in 10 to 15 years’ time. I appreciate the noble Viscount’s support and this question. We should be continually striving to do free trade agreements with India and other countries. I very much look forward to the support of noble Lords opposite and my noble friends behind me as we embark on this great mission.