UK-India Free Trade Agreement

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Sometimes! Perhaps a tee-slightly-er or a tee-occasionally-er, but not total. [Interruption.] Yes, only in the early morning. Well, I got that completely wrong.

Anyway, I think all Members will want to celebrate the fact that we are managing to get the whisky tariff down from 150% to 75%, and then down to 40%. That will be transformational. Incidentally, this is not just about whisky itself; the other day I was with one of the founding members of Fever-Tree, who pointed out that it is also about soft drinks, including the soft drinks that go with the whisky, ginger ale being a classic instance. If we can get Fever-Tree ginger ale out to India at the same time, or for that matter—who knows?—perhaps even Indian tonic water, that will be a significant benefit for us.

The hon. Gentleman made a perfectly legitimate point about timing. Plenty of companies are asking me, “When is it all going to start?” We have to go through a ratification process, and what we are doing now is part of that. India has its own process, which is largely in the hands of Mr Modi directly, but I am very confident that that can happen fairly swiftly, and I hope very much that in the next few weeks and months we will be able to declare a date for entry into force.

There is always a slight moment between concluding the negotiations, the signature, the ratification and then entry into force. We cannot ever be precise about the date of entry into force until ratification has proceeded, but we are working as fast as we can. There is one other element that we always said we wanted to happen simultaneously: the double contributions agreement, which His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is negotiating with India. As soon as all that is completed, I hope we will be able to get to entry into force. I will come on to the implementation.

I should just say that I slightly confused all my tariff lines earlier between steel and ceramics. We will tidy that up a little later, if that is all right with you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Every region and nation will benefit from the agreement, including a £210 million boost for the north-west, driven by aerospace and automotive wins; a £190 million boost for Scotland, supported by cuts to whisky and satellite tariffs, and by financial services access; and a £190 million boost for the east of England, generated through tariff cuts and improved rules for medical devices and clean energy products. There are some big winners, and I have already talked about whisky. We estimate that whisky exports will increase by £230 million—an 88% increase. The tariffs on autos will fall from over 100% to 10% under quota, which will phase from combustion engines to electric vehicles. Auto parts and car engine exports are expected to increase by £189 million—a 148% increase.

The tariffs on cosmetics will fall from 20% to as low as 0%, which will boost exports by £400 million—a 364% increase. I talked to Charlotte Tilbury about this the other day, and she was absolutely—[Interruption.] The Whip is very keen on Charlotte Tilbury, so I will pass on her request for further information. I think you are putting in a request as well, Madam Deputy Speaker. The important point is that we need to make sure that businesses know that there is this new opportunity out there in India, and we need to maximise the exploitation of the new tariffs.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

According to the Government’s figures, this trade deal will add only 0.14% to our national GDP. What are we giving up in return for that measly amount of benefit, and is it really worth sacrificing our commitment to human rights to sign these kinds of trade deals with countries and leaders who are reported to have breached human rights?

[Chris Bryant]

I will talk about human rights in a moment, but if the hon. Gentleman can come up with a better way of finding a 0.14% increase in GDP, I would be very happy to hear it. Frankly, the idea that we would just turn our backs on one of the biggest economies and largest democracies in the world, and not say yes to a trade deal, is for the birds.

There is a whole series of human rights issues that we always want to raise with our trade partners, and we do so. When we are negotiating a free trade agreement, they are not necessarily a central part of it, but in this deal, for the first time ever, we have clauses on a whole range of human rights-related issues. The hon. Gentleman could easily point out that these are not legally enforceable, but they are an opportunity—both at the first review, which will come at entry into force, and on future occasions, which are laid out in the free trade agreement—for us to talk through these issues. Human rights issues are primarily the responsibility of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, through which we raise issues relating to Kashmir, particular individuals, labour laws and so on.

I am aware that non-tariff barriers are being removed through improved customs processes, reductions in technical barriers to trade, increased facilitation of digital trade, supportive intellectual property commitments and greater collaboration on new technologies. This will all help to make trade quicker, cheaper and easier.

On services, which are obviously very important for us as a services superpower, market access is locked in, including ensuring that UK companies are treated on an equal footing with Indian companies. The deal includes India’s first ever financial services and telecoms chapters. The free trade agreement is expected to boost services exports by £1.6 billion. On procurement, which again is very important for the UK, brand-new access to India’s federal procurement market will be locked in, guaranteeing access to approximately 40,000 tenders per year, worth at least £38 billion per annum, and exclusive treatment for UK companies. For the first time, UK companies will have access to India’s procurement portal.

I hope the colleagues will agree that CETA is a good deal for the UK, but I want to respond to a couple of points made in the Business and Trade Committee’s report. First, the deal will only be of any use if it is actually used by UK companies. We know that it will not always be plain sailing, thanks to varying rules in different states and provinces—that point was made in evidence to the Committee—the staging of tariff liberalisation will need explaining, and non-tariff barriers can be just as important as tariff barriers.

As the first Minister for trade policy and for exports, I am keen to ensure that businesses have all the support they need to exploit this deal. That is why we are protecting the Department for Business and Trade team in India, and why we have already engaged with more than 5,000 UK businesses on how to exploit CETA, through guidance, events and roadshows. As I said earlier, this is not just about Scotch whisky; it is also about Fever-Tree ginger ale to go with it and its Indian tonic water. We have also provided specific support to the UK cosmetics industry to exploit the cut in cosmetics tariffs, which will benefit companies such as Charlotte Tilbury and Dr.PAWPAW. As the Committee suggests, once we get to entry into force, we will monitor the operation of CETA’s provisions, including through the regular reviews built into the agreement.

This is also not the full stop in our developing relationship with India. Vision 2035, agreed with India alongside the free trade agreement, sets out a shared framework for deeper co-operation across technology, defence, climate and strategic exports, reinforcing the long-term direction of the bilateral partnership. We will also try to resolve other market access issues not solved in the free trade agreement—for example, legal services, recognition of qualifications and other specific state-level barriers. The UK is open to continuing negotiations for a bilateral investment treaty, as long as it works for UK businesses.

As I have said, this is a trade agreement, but I want to assure Members that it also promotes British values. We have secured India’s first ever chapters on anti-corruption, consumer protections, labour rights, the environment, gender and development, and the agreement includes the strongest environmental commitments that India has ever made in an FTA. Our key commitments and red lines have been maintained throughout, including protecting the NHS; ensuring that our immigration system is not affected; carving out defence and protecting our export controls; excluding sensitive agricultural sectors, including pork, chicken, eggs and milled rice; maintaining our food standards and animal welfare levels; and keeping the carbon border adjustment mechanism out of the deal.

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, so I am glad that the European Union has now reached political agreement on its own FTA with India, for which it seems the UK deal was used as a baseline, but the UK retains first mover advantage. I am hopeful that we will get to entry into force before the end of the summer, so that UK businesses can start exploiting the reduced tariffs this year, while the EU will still take some time to achieve ratification, and only the UK has secured access to India’s £38 billion federal procurement market.

Let me make one final point. The UK is a trading nation: we rely on free and fair trade, and we believe that global trade needs a set of rules. The World Trade Organisation will meet in Cameroon in the next few weeks. We believe that it needs upholding and reforming so that it can tackle the challenges of today, including electronic commerce, unfair subsidies, dumping and secure supply chains with agility and dependability. However, we also believe that trade agreements such as these, along with our membership of the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, help to secure our prosperity and enhance our international standing. We are still pursuing new or enhanced deals with the Gulf Co-operation Council, Türkiye, Switzerland and Greenland, and we are completing the text of our economic prosperity deal with the United States of America and our deal with the European Union. I commend this deal to the House, and I congratulate the former Ministers who secured it.

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[Andrew Griffith]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. The former Secretary of State—the current Leader of the Opposition—has been very clear that that was a deal breaker. It was deal or no deal, and if that had been an absolute red line, we would not have signed this deal. It is not a virtue to take any deal that is offered. As I say, the Conservatives are in favour of trade, and we value our relationship with India, but we would not have crossed that red line.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Does the right hon. Member agree that anybody who comes to our country and does not pay into the system through national insurance and taxes should not be allowed to benefit from services that taxpayers fund, like the NHS, education, GPs, dentists and so on? It is a two-tier system if we are treating our care workers and healthcare professionals who come here on official visas differently from imported labour.

[Andrew Griffith]

I am glad to hear agreement across the House on the desire not to have a two-tier system. We all understand the need to pay our taxes to support our public services, but it will not feel right if two people are sitting cheek by jowl, side by side in the same place of employment—a factory or other work environment—but are contributing at a very different rate to the Exchequer for the public services that we all support.

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[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

The Indian Government are highly unusual in their approach to trade agreements. Unlike most other countries, India has a long-standing policy of using trade deals to try to secure favourable treatment in the immigration system. This deal, unfortunately, is no different. Under the terms of the agreement, Indian companies will be able to transfer their workers to this country far more easily and, once they are here, those workers will be able to avoid national insurance for up to three years, needing only to pay into the Indian social security system—payments that are, unsurprisingly, much lower than here in the UK. This national insurance holiday will make it much cheaper to hire Indian workers, especially in fields such as IT and engineering, than domestic talent.

Imagine a British IT firm is set to hire a computer programmer for £60,000 a year. On top of that, an employer must pay £8,250 in national insurance. That totals £68,250. To hire someone on the same salary, their Indian competitor would only need to pay about £1,470 to the Indian employee provident fund, to which mandatory contributions are capped at 15,000 rupees a month—about £120. That totals £61,470. Under the Government’s deal, it would, therefore, be at least 10% cheaper to hire an Indian worker than a British one. That is absurd.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Does the hon. Member agree that employees of Indian companies who are sent here to work for three years and who then may stay on would normally not be paid the British salary level and would be happy to accept a lower salary? As well as saving on national insurance, these companies will be saving a lot more money by underpaying their employees.

[Katie Lam]

That is an important point because, as I am about to talk about, we have double contribution conventions with other countries, but not with other countries with economies like India’s where so many people—well north of a billion people—would be happy to do these jobs for much lower salaries than our workers at home would expect.

As I say, it is true that we have double contribution conventions with other countries. These aim to simplify intracompany transfers for international businesses. However, these agreements are usually struck with countries that have compatible economies, similar educational outcomes and comparable social security systems, such as Japan or Canada. India stands alone as by far the largest and least wealthy country on the list. In exchange for a deal with India, this Government have chosen to sell out skilled British workers who have worked hard to get where they are by allowing Indian firms to undercut them. We will see highly skilled British workers in cutting-edge fields, such as engineering, priced out by Indian workers. Given the relative markets and educational systems in the UK and India, we should not expect that always to be a like-for-like swap in terms of talent.

We have already seen this model take hold in the United States. There, Indian consultancy firms lease their workers to American companies, who are then able to pay an Indian worker far less than they would need to pay an American. The result has been a massive expansion in the number of lower-cost Indian workers at the expense of American workers. Most other countries are perfectly happy to strike trade deals without forcing us to undercut our own workforce. This Government should have expected India to do the same.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I want to start with huge thanks to my colleagues on the Business and Trade Committee for helping to inform the debate with a report that was agreed cross-party and that provided, if anything, a reasonably warm welcome for the Government’s work in securing this free trade agreement, but with a number of caveats, which I will touch on.

Before I set out the Committee’s evaluation of the agreement, it is worth marking this moment. The Minister, who is not known for underselling such moments in the House, actually could have sold this one rather more. Although we do not know quite when he will get the Gulf co-operation deal, which is no doubt imminent, over the line, or the Swiss deal—presumably it is not too far off—this could well be the year when he crowns a number of free trade agreements signed since we left the European Union. They could, in effect, create a triple ocean system of alliances that basically brings UK free trade agreements to about 46 countries in all, home to 2.5 billion people and blessed with something like 60% of world output. That is quite an achievement.

Pro-Europeans on the Government Benches will, of course, say that we can now look at the prize of what free trade agreements have brought compared with the losses entailed since we left the European Union. About £14 billion of GDP uplift is forecast as a result of the free trade agreements that we have signed. That is much less than the perhaps £140 billion hit to GDP that we have had since leaving the European Union. But I will not provoke you, Madam Deputy Speaker, by dwelling on that point for too long. None the less, this India free trade agreement is the keystone of that new architecture. It connects us to one of the world’s fastest growing economies and anchors us in the Indo-Pacific for decades to come. It is also worth saying that this is a significant moment for India, because this is not the only deal that India has signed, as the Minister said; it has also signed the EU deal, and it appears that there is a deal with the United States. India is on the cusp of the biggest transformation in its trade policy since independence. It is a country that has long been defined by its protectionism, but it now chooses to use its trade agreements as the anchors for ambitious domestic reform. If these agreements hold, as I hope they will, with the exception of agriculture, India is now moving from selective liberalisation to something approximating a near-open economy. That is a very significant moment in India’s long history, home as it is to about a sixth of humanity.

These trade deals are not the traditional kind of “Swiss cheese deals” with lots of carve-outs, delays and exemptions. India is now set to almost fully liberalise its manufacturing sector within seven to 10 years. That is a step change by any historical standard. For the first time, India has agreed deals that will be policed by powerful external partners, not just the Minister—a powerful interlocutor in any trade negotiation—but by the combined might of the European Commission.

For an Indian Government who have been protectionist by conviction for a long time, this represents an important reversal of deep nationalist instincts. As one of the world’s great homes of free trade, our nation should celebrate that. I hope that the Minister can use Delhi’s new-found philosophy in his conversations at the World Trade Organisation and elsewhere over the course of the year. Let us face it: we all need more allies for free trade in this world. If we are to build what the Finnish call “values-based multilateralism”, which is probably the best safeguard for peace in this world, India’s role in promoting free trade could be an important component. Another important dimension of that new posture relates to China. If India does indeed grow a low-cost manufacturing sector, the world will need to depend much less on China.

All in all, it is important that the UK has played its role in securing that agreement. The Committee’s report confirms that the agreement secures substantial tariff liberalisation in what is a highly protected market. As the Minister said, Indian tariffs are reduced or eliminated —by our reckoning—on 92% of UK exports by value, with around 64% of tariff lines liberalised on day one. The Government modelling, such as it is—always a bit speculative; always some interesting assumptions; always a bit long term; and always a bit difficult to pressure-test—suggests that the deal will add nearly £5 billion a year to UK GDP by 2040, and raises UK-India trade by £25.5 billion. Those are the numbers that the Minister rehearsed in his opening speech tonight.

The Committee’s analysis, however, presents more meaningful numbers for UK business. The £400 million-worth of tariff savings in year one is real revenue for UK businesses. That will flatter the bottom line, and, for businesses that are under pressure for reasons that we will set out in a report on Wednesday, it could provide much important cash flow. Those tariff savings could rise to about £3.2 billion over 10 years, as export volumes improve. There will be clear future gains for particular sectors. We think there could be a significant prize in the automotive industry, although there are implementation challenges, and clarity is required on how the quotas will work in practice.

As the Minister said, and as we heard from other hon. Members, spirits exporters will do extremely well from this new bargain. They will see reductions in the extremely high tariffs of today. As the Minister belaboured, UK firms will for the first time secure access to India’s central Government procurement market. That is a very large number. Whether our firms can genuinely compete for those new contracts is something that the Committee plans to study carefully.

When the deal was signed and first published, there was a lot of noise in the media about migration and mobility, and the Committee took a lot of evidence on that. We concluded that the agreement is not, in fact, a big migration deal, and nor does it materially change overall migration policy. As the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), pointed out well, it provides limited facilitation of mobility for skilled professionals linked to trade and services delivery. It could go much further in the future, but given where the Home Office positions itself on that policy at the moment, we accept that there will not be much progress in the near term.

The other real advances reflect years of negotiation and should not be dismissed, but the Committee wishes to underline that there are very significant risks attached to this agreement. India is not a frictionless market; tariffs were never the only barrier. The regulatory system in India is complex, decentralised and highly discretionary. Many of the barriers—be they licensing requirements or certification documentation—are at the state level, and the state-level variation, and state-level stubbornness in bringing those barriers down, will require an awful lot of work in India by His Majesty’s Government. That is why the successes of this agreement depend less on what is written in the treaty text, and far more on whether firms can operationalise it in day-to-day, week-to-week business.

I am glad that the Minister sought to take this bull by the horns in his opening remarks, because we are being asked to debate a treaty at a time when the Department for Business and Trade is seeking 40% reductions in export support staff. He went out of his way to stress that those headcount reductions would not be in India—I think that was the guarantee that he gave the House. That is important because those officials are responsible for helping firms to navigate the rules of origin, quota management, regulatory blockages and enforcement failures. They will also be required to staff a lot of the working groups that he and his counterpart will oversee. I worry that the reduction in export support staff in the United Kingdom will deny firms in Britain the knowledge and connections they might need to exploit the full possibilities of this new agreement.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The UK is well regulated: we have auditing and verification, and there is a level of trust in the system for products, services, food, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. I am a big fan of India—my heritage is Indian, and my family is from India, so I am not here to criticise India unnecessarily—but the culture of compliance there is not on the same level or as embedded as it is in Europe and the UK. We would need more audits and external inspections to confirm that the products coming to our shores meet our standards, and for that the Government must invest more in resources, not reduce team sizes. Does the right hon. Member agree?

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Member is exactly right. When the Committee published our report, we lamented that there was not a full-scale, full-blown implementation plan alongside the proposals. To a degree, those are difficult things to write, because it is difficult to forecast how quickly the treaty will go through the ratification process needed in India, for example, but we heard evidence that some markets—not least in automotives—had been chilled. Of course, if people know that there are huge tariff and price savings on the way, why would they not delay their purchase rather than make it today? We think that there could have been some wisdom in at least attempting an implementation plan, not least a resource plan that goes alongside the treaty—and perhaps even something tabled in time for tonight’s debate, to reassure the House that the Government will watch the implementation of this deal like a hawk.

The Select Committee has decided to go to India in March to understand how this deal will be implemented in real life. If our export support work is hollowed out, the consequences will be predictable: smaller exporters will walk away, utilisation rates for the treaty will remain low, and the headline gains will fail to reach the wider economy and benefit the constituents who sent us to this House to debate this treaty. I hope that the Minister will, as quickly as he can, rustle up an implementation plan to tell us how the agreement will be implemented. I very much hope that he will be able to align the ambitions for the treaty with the level of resource that he and his Department are investing in it.

The House will want to know that the Committee also tested the treaty against the deals secured by our allies in the European Union and the United States. Compared with the EU-India deal, it seems that the UK has moved faster and secured earlier liberalisation on some tariff lines. We have liberalised 92% of the value of our exports, while the EU has secured 96.6% of its exports, but both were for roughly the same level of market access offered to India—offers covering over 99% of India’s exports by value to the UK and EU markets.

The EU deal obviously covers a much wider volume of trade than we deliver with India, so the EU will therefore enjoy much bigger total tariff savings and a much bigger quota access, particularly for the automotive sector, among others. However, as the Opposition spokesman rightly flagged, there was limited progress on services—we flagged that, too. Services are the lifeblood of the British economy and of our exports—we are a services superpower. The EU’s negotiating position appears at first blush to be broader and deeper, but the final outcomes will remain unclear until the final text is published.

Compared with the United States, the contrast is different again. It appears that the White House has prioritised strategic leverage and tariff pressure over comprehensive liberalisation, extracting concessions through market power, not through traditional FTA approaches. The UK has chosen a different path: ruled-based, negotiated commitments and long-term engagement. I think that choice can work for us, as long as we are ruthless about ensuring good implementation.

We are sceptical about the level of services mobility that has been delivered, and about the absence of a bilateral investment treaty—we think that is a significant gap in our long-term framework. We also recognise that policy volatility and regulatory risk still matter. In particular, India’s record on investor protection remains uneven, and its tax administration is still too often used in a way that is, frankly, weaponised. Ensuring that we have good ways to monitor and escalate this will be important if the deal is to be a success.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) flagged up, some UK sectors, like textiles and ceramics, will face increased competitive pressure, and although the agreement does contain binding human rights provisions, the responsibilities of UK firms do not end at the border. Being strong on human rights protection, upgrading the dysfunctional Trade Remedies Authority and pressuring the Competition and Markets Authority to publish a foreign subsidy control regime would be extremely welcome.

The final point I want to flag is an issue that came up during the Minister’s appearance in front of the Committee, and I have not heard enough tonight or since he came to the Committee about its progress. The reality is that India remains one of the biggest customers of Russian oil. That money is fuelling Putin’s war machine, and as recently as January, His Majesty’s Government had not introduced controls that were in place in the European Union to ensure that oil derivatives made from Russian oil were banned from this country. Indeed, when Politico reported on this earlier in the year, it noted that something like one in six units of Britain’s aviation fuel imports were derived from Russian oil. That is not something that the Minister will want to tolerate for very long. For a long time, he has been one of the leading voices in the House in standing up to Putin and the evil of Russia, so I hope during the wind-ups he will say more about exactly what he is doing, along with his colleagues, to ensure that we are stopping the possibilities of importing Russian oil derivatives from India.

In conclusion, our overall take is that this is a good deal that is in the UK national interest, but I do want to supply one final note of dissent. When the CRaG legislation was introduced to the House in 2010, it was always the intention of Parliament that when free trade deals came for debate, there would be a votable motion. That would allow Parliament to exercise the licence that it was promised to delay ratification if it was discontent with the terms of an agreement before us. I am grateful to the Leader of the House and the Minister for ensuring that there is a general debate tonight, but it is not a debate on a votable motion. If this Parliament is to be a strong watchdog and guardian of the Executive, it is important that what were once prerogative powers are transferred to us, here in this House. I hope that this is the last debate on a free trade agreement that takes place on a general motion; in a democracy, we decide things by voting.

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[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) says that I have not mentioned that, but I had just started. Of course, he represents a part of the United Kingdom that we have all been told gets the best of both worlds by being in the single market and the customs union. Imagine: the best of both worlds, as we have been told by Conservative and Labour Members!

On that point, will the Minister tell the House why the EU has been able to remove more tariffs on its EU goods? There is also—I wonder whether he will talk about this—a stronger commitment on climate sustainability as well as trading, including elements dealing with climate change. Of course, on bilateral income, although the EU is a bigger market and therefore the figures will be bigger, we know that the percentage for EU savings is also higher. I know that the Minister used to be a European enthusiast, although since he has gone into government that has dissipated somewhat.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

I will give way one last time.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that being inside the EU would have given us much more bargaining power? The reason the EU has a better deal with India is because it has collective bargaining with so many countries. We are a lone wolf, a little island, and countries agreeing trade deals with us know that they have got us over a barrel.

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[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

The Minister was one of the most ardent remainers that this House produced, yet he is proposing a trade deal that would not have been possible if he had had his way; I am sure the irony is not lost on him. It is only because of Brexit that it is possible for the United Kingdom to reach trade deals with countries across the world.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The EU just signed one!

[Jim Allister]

I will deal with the fact that the EU just signed one.

As I said in an intervention, I was a Member of the European Parliament when Peter Mandelson was a Trade Minister, and I well remember him trumpeting the fact that the EU was going to negotiate a trade deal with India. That was in 2007. It took the EU until 2026 to cobble together a trade deal, such is the pace at which it proceeds. The post-Brexit United Kingdom has been able to reach this deal since 2022, so although EU fantasists seek to draw a parallel, what they say does not stack up.

[Jim Allister]

I suspect that one of the reasons is that the EU made the process a punishment beating of the United Kingdom, in respect of Northern Ireland, so that any other country that was thinking of daring to assert its sovereignty would be frightened out of it. I will return to the impact of this deal on Northern Ireland in a minute.

It is good to see the tariffs fall. Across the board, tariffs on UK products going to India will generally fall from 15% to 3%. However, I have a question for the Minister. From what I read in this deal, it seems that once the deal is confirmed, there will be an immediate, uninhibited flow of Indian goods that come under the deal into the United Kingdom, but it seems that the reciprocal movement of goods will be on a progressive basis, rather than immediate. Perhaps the Minister will explain to the House why that is. Why do the Indians get immediate access, but we get truncated and delayed access? We would all be interested to hear that.

I note that the deal reduces the horrendous tariffs on whiskey, but they are still at a very high level of 75%. I have Bushmills in my constituency, which provokes my interest in this issue. It provides good jobs. Ultimately, we are told, over 10 years, the tariff might reduce to 40%, but that is still a whopping tariff, though, yes, it is much better than 150%.

I want some clarification from the Minister on a point relating to vehicles. A portion of this agreement deals with access to the Indian market for United Kingdom vehicles, but that access is capped. May I ask explicitly if that includes buses, or is it just cars? It is very important that it includes buses, because in my constituency we have Wrightbus, which produces quality buses, and we also have buses produced in Falkirk in Scotland, and elsewhere. It is important that there is access across the vehicular market, that it includes buses, and that it is not unreasonably capped. Perhaps the Minister can explain the why of the cap.

I come now to the absurdity of the implementation of this deal, the Windsor framework and the protocol that afflicts Northern Ireland. Under the Windsor framework, we in Northern Ireland are left under the EU’s customs union. That means that any imports from India come to Northern Ireland subject not to the tariffs set forth in this deal, but to EU tariffs. Our exports, such as Bushmills whiskey, go out under the deal, but imports are blocked from having whatever tariff applies for the rest of the United Kingdom. We are subject to the EU tariffs; that is a common feature across all the deals that have been done and will be done.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Maybe the hon. and learned Member can enlighten me. A provision like that had to be introduced to keep the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland friction-free. Would not removing the Windsor framework impose a hard border between the two nations?

[Jim Allister]

No, it most certainly would not. In modern times, there is abundant opportunity to develop a scheme, with the assistance of modern technology, that would allow for mutual enforcement when it comes to something as fundamental as international trade.

If a company in my constituency wants to sell buses to Germany—I will stick with buses—it must make them to the standards of the German customer. If a German company wants to sell buses to the United Kingdom, it must make them to the standards of the United Kingdom. That is the fundamental starting point for trade. We create a circumstance wherein each country enforces the standards of the other, and we thereby protect the market of the other. To underwrite that, we introduce a criminal sanction saying that if any company in the United Kingdom breaches those rules, there is criminal liability, and we will look for reciprocal arrangements. That is the essence of mutual enforcement. That would work, but instead, we have sacrificed sovereignty over part of our country to a foreign jurisdiction, namely, the EU. We have said to it, “We will subject all our economy to your rules, which we do not make and cannot change,” and we did that utterly unnecessarily.

The real bite of unfairness in that is that many companies in Northern Ireland do not trade outside the United Kingdom—many do not even trade outside Northern Ireland—but they are caught by the same rules as if they did. They must make and market their goods as dictated by the foreign jurisdiction. They need none of the protections necessary for the EU single market, but they face the imposition of unnecessary restrictions.

The issue really reduces to this: are we a United Kingdom? If we are a United Kingdom, the laws of this nation should be made by this United Kingdom, not by a foreign jurisdiction, which imposes on my constituents in 300 areas of law. These are laws that we do not make and cannot change. We are a supplicant rule taker. That is so fundamentally wrong. The Minister will give me—and has given me before—a rather trite response: “Oh, that is all because of Brexit!” Sorry, but it is not. It is because we in Northern Ireland did not get Brexit; the Windsor framework denied us Brexit. It kept us in the EU’s customs union and single market, whereas the rest of the United Kingdom escaped. That is why we have this absurd situation where we do not get the full benefit of these trade deals. As a representative of my constituency, I ask other Members of this House: why are my constituents less important or entitled in these matters than those of every other Member from Great Britain?

We then have some in this House, such as the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins), who want us all to rejoin the customs union so that we cannot make trade deals, whether with India or any country. We could then have only the deals that someone else makes for us—it is such absurdity. Those are the fundamental issues that I would like to see addressed.

As for getting the best of both worlds, that is a fantasy for Northern Ireland, and there is a very simple reason why. We might have access to the EU market—as GB does through its trade deal with the EU—but we forget that to bring all our goods and raw materials from our main market in GB, they have to pass through an international customs border, with paperwork, checks and extra costs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

Like everybody across this House, as a proud British citizen, I of course support the Government’s intentions in the growth strategy and their efforts to agree mutually beneficial trade agreements between countries after the debacle of Brexit, with which we lost collective bargaining and the benefits that we enjoyed from EU membership.

I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the absolutely mandatory obligation on Britain to ensure that, whatever trade deals we negotiate with whichever country, wherever in the world, human rights are front and centre in those negotiations.

Thousands of my Kashmiri diaspora constituents and their families are suffering. They have been suffering for nearly 80 years, and it is about time that Britain took a lead in helping alleviate the occupation of Kashmir and the illegal treatment of citizens there to allow them the right to self-determination. Building on the issue of human rights, I also join the hon. Member and my hon. Friend in expressing my profound sadness and disappointment that we are signing a free trade agreement with a leader of a Hindu nationalist governing party that has, for decades, violently persecuted Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other minorities in India for their religious belief or their class status, and the millions of people in occupied Kashmir.

Most egregiously, as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, Modi facilitated a pogrom that resulted in over 1,000 individuals, the majority of whom were Muslim, being murdered amidst widespread reports of sexual violence, looting and property destruction. The exact death toll of the Gujarat riots is unclear, but it is estimated to have exceeded 1,000 men, women and children, the vast majority of whom were Muslim. According to Genocide Watch, during the massacres at least 250 women and girls were gang-raped before being burnt to death. A mob of 5,000 people set fire to houses of Muslims in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya neighbourhood, resulting in the deaths of over 65 people. Before being burnt and hacked to death, women and girls were gang-raped in public. Their male family members were forced to watch the rapes, and they were then killed.

I have a couple of heartbreaking examples. Hina Kausar from Naroda Patiya was pregnant when she was raped. Several eyewitnesses testified that she was raped and tortured, and that her womb was slit open with a sword to extract the foetus, which was then hacked to pieces and burnt alive alongside the mother. Bilkis Yakoob Rasool was five-months pregnant when she was gang-raped, and 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were murdered in front of her eyes. The Gujarat Government have now granted early release to all 11 of her convicted rapists.

I was in Ahmedabad myself on the first and subsequent days of these riots. I climbed to the rooftop of my uncle’s home, and I watched the city burn around me. Black smoke was billowing from every direction. I saw at first hand how the leader of a state facilitated and stood by as fanatics murdered, raped and pillaged their way through Muslim communities and neighbourhoods. Modi was complicit in this ethnic cleansing, even if attempts at achieving legal justice have so far proven futile. Since then, he has continued to refuse to accept any responsibility or to apologise for the events that took place, thereby adding insult to injury for the bereaved victims and families.

As Prime Minister of India, Modi continues to engage in faith-based oppression of India’s Muslim, Christian and other minority populations. Homes, businesses and places of worship are unlawfully and arbitrarily demolished —a phenomenon that Amnesty International has labelled “bulldozer injustice”. Communal violence against Muslims is rife, with mob violence and lynchings on a daily or weekly basis.

I gently remind the Government of how innocent civilians are being treated by the Government with whom we are signing this trade deal. I urge them to do everything in their power to get the best deal that we can, but without compromising the principle of human rights for all. Muslims, Christians, Dalits and others are relegated to the status of second-class citizens and subject to collective punishment. The Government should instead pursue an economic diplomacy that recognises the importance of religious tolerance and pushes to promote peaceful co-existence of groups with different beliefs. Signing this trade agreement—and with it, exchanging a reduction in tariffs for our values—sends a dangerous signal to the world that religious bigotry and violations of international human rights law are permissible.

Since Brexit, successive UK Governments have shifted away from integrating enforceable human rights clauses into trade deals; they have instead opted for profit over people by adopting a values-free approach that starkly diverges from the human and workers’ rights provisions that the EU—albeit imperfectly—championed. Shame on them, and shame on this deal! The Government should follow the Human Rights Committee’s proposals that standard human rights protections should be included in all agreements, and that we should begin to treat human rights as something that applies to all individuals of any religion, anywhere in the world.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.