British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in India on Wednesday, months after London and New Delhi signed a landmark free trade agreement, capping years of intense negotiations.
Starmer’s first official trip to India, which he hopes will boost economic ties between the two nations, sees him accompanied by a 125-member delegation that includes top business leaders including British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle.
The two-day visit follows his July meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in London, where the pair signed the trade accord.
Starmer is due to meet Modi tomorrow, and address a fintech conference in Mumbai alongside him.
“With India set to be the third biggest economy in the world by 2028, and trade with them about to become quicker and cheaper, the opportunities waiting to be seized are unparalleled,” Starmer said in a statement.
India and its former colonial ruler are the world’s fifth- and sixth-largest economies, with bilateral trade worth around $54.8 billion and investments supporting more than 600,000 jobs across both countries.
The visit “will provide a valuable opportunity to reaffirm the shared vision of India and the United Kingdom to build a forward-looking partnership”, India’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Under the new deal, India will slash tariffs on imports of British goods such as whisky, cosmetics and medical devices, while Britain will reduce duties on clothing, footwear and food products, including frozen prawns from India.
‘Britain not seeking visa deal with India’
However, Starmer ruled out expanding visa access for Indian professionals despite pressure from industry.
“That isn’t part of the plan,” he told reporters en route to Mumbai. “We’re here now to take advantage of the free trade agreement that we’ve already struck. We’ve got to implement it.
“Businesses are taking advantage of that. But the issue is not about visas.”
Starmer said that visas had blocked previous efforts to seal a trade deal, and that, having reached an agreement which had no visa implications, he didn’t wish to revisit the issue when he meets Modi tomorrow.
The British premier said visas would not be on the table in order to attract tech sector professionals from India, after United States President Donald Trump hiked fees on H-1B visas, though he said more broadly he wanted to have “top talent” in Britain.
Asked if he would stop issuing visas to arrivals from countries that won’t take back foreign criminals or people wanted to deport, Starmer said it was a “non-issue” with India as there is a returns agreement, but it was something he would look at more broadly.
“We are looking at whether there should be a link between visas and returns agreements,” he said.
Starmer is trying to take a more restrictive stance on both immigration amid high public concern about the issue, as his Labour Party trails the populist Reform UK party in polls.
Rights groups have urged Starmer to raise the case of Scottish Sikh blogger Jagtar Singh Johal, detained in India since 2017 over an alleged plot to kill right-wing Hindu leaders. He has not been convicted, and one of the nine charges against him was dismissed in March.
