Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been blasted for giving Indian workers a "leg up" over Britons after agreeing a multi-billion pound trade deal with India.The agreement marks the biggest and most economically significant bilateral trade deal the UK has secured since leaving the EU - expected to increase bilateral trade by £25.5billion.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Thank you very, very much. I'm going to quote to you something that Mike Tapp, the Labour MP, has had to say.
00:07He actually is of the view that there is, quote, no negative spin to this whatsoever.
00:14He says that basically this is not going to increase immigration from India and that you guys had eight years to try and do a trade deal and you didn't do it.
00:24I'll just say he says this is a standard tax agreement we already have with 50 other countries.
00:30Is he right about that?
00:34No, he's wrong about that, just as the prime minister, I'm afraid, is wrong about so very much, particularly when it comes to the economy where he's done great damage.
00:44Now, look, just just to unpack this a bit, Patrick, of course, we support free trade.
00:49This is a wonderful country. The world wants to buy what British firms make and the services that we offer, which is why we started as a post Brexit benefit, the ability to form deals like this.
01:03But let me be also clear with your viewers. This is not a deal we would have done.
01:07The compromise that this government has eaten and the truth is in the description on the Indian side of this deal, that it will make it easier for Indians to come here.
01:18And in particular, it will give them a great leg up versus British workers.
01:22At the time, the government's been pushing up national insurance, the big Labour jobs tax, 25 billion extra cost on British firms.
01:31They're cutting the very same tax on Indian workers employed by Indian firms coming over here.
01:38So if you think about a business like Jaguar up in Solihel, a great business, it'll be cheaper for them to transfer workers from India than it will to give British workers local jobs.
01:49Lots of good things. It is a Brexit that was about was about trans aliens.
01:55But they also say, Mike Tapp also says, it doesn't apply to Indian nationals applying for UK jobs.
02:00It doesn't grant access to UK benefits and it doesn't change immigration rules.
02:05So there appears to be two very different readings of this trade deal, Mr Griffith.
02:12Well, some of those points you just said are more accurate than the previous ones.
02:16And it does actually open up a little bit the visa rules that Indians can apply for.
02:21It doesn't affect those that are applying for British jobs. That's quite correct.
02:26But look, let's big picture. We are taking no lessons at all from Labour.
02:31Yes, this deal has some good components.
02:34It is a Brexit benefit from a Labour party that voted 48 times to overturn Brexit.
02:40If they'd got their way, there would be no way that British firms could get better access to Indian markets.
02:47It's one of the fastest growing economies in the world, growing much faster than the European Union,
02:52where they are gearing up later this month with their surrender summit on the 19th of May
02:57to give back so many of the powers that we were able to obtain through Brexit.
03:02Keir Starmer will no doubt be making the point that for British workers looking to go to India for about three years,
03:08they also don't pay any equivalent of national insurance over there.
03:12So they say this is good. It works both ways. So what's the problem?
03:18Well, there's a vanishingly small number, unlike some of the other deals like in Canada or Korea.
03:24There's a vanishingly small number of British workers that go to India.
03:29So it's just it's just not symmetrical, Patrick.
03:31The truth is, and you can see this in the fact that the UK government didn't talk about this aspect of the deal at all,
03:39not in their press release, not in Parliament.
03:41In India, they held this is a great win.
03:44Once again, when Labour negotiates, Britain is the country that loses.