‘They faffed around for 8 yrs’: UK PM Starmer defends ambitious FTA with India, tax clause

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, defending the newly-announced free trade agreement with India and the tax clause, said the opposition “faffed around” for eight years but they got the job done within 10 months. He also blasted Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who he claimed, comes along every week to talk the country down. 

“Every week, Mr Speaker, she comes along to talk the country down, to carp from the sidelines. She can’t even bring herself to celebrate the deal we have done with India. They took eight years fiddling around and got absolutely nothing. We’ve delivered the best deal since we left the EU, the most ambitious deal for India to be measured in billions of pounds into our economy and thousands of jobs in the country. She should be welcoming that,” Keir Starmer, referring to Badenoch and the Opposition Tories. 

The UK Opposition – the Tories – have criticised the Double Contribution Convention clause that allows Indian workers seconded to Britain will not have to pay National Insurance contributions for the first three years. This exemption also applies to British workers in India. The clause was one of India’s key demands for the deal. 

The Conservative Party called this “two-tier taxes” that was going to unfairly benefit Indian workers while costing the UK economy millions of pounds. 

Starmer told the House of Commons: “The criticism on the double taxation is incoherent nonsense. It's a benefit to working people. It's in the agreements that we've already got with 50 other countries. And if the Leader of the Opposition is seriously suggesting that they're going to tear up agreements with 50 other countries, create a massive hole in our economy, they should get up and they should say so.”

Badenoch had taken to social media to claim that the FTA was the same flawed deal that she had refused to sign as former business and trade secretary. Her party leadership rival Robert Jenrick attacked the deal because it “means Indian workers here for less than three years will not pay National Insurance in the UK”. Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper also said the deal undercut British workers at a time when the economy is being hammered by Trump’s trade war. Anti-immigration Reform party leader Nigel Farage said the government doesn’t “give a damn about working people”.  

UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, who had finalised the deal with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal during his London visit last week, said, “No British worker is being undercut by this. I would never do a deal that undercuts British workers. This is not a tangible issue. This is the Conservative Party and Reform, unable to accept that this Labour government has done what they couldn’t do and get this deal across the line and inventing a false reason why they couldn’t get this across the line.”