UK's ex-minister claims blocking India-UK free trade agreement over visa demands: Reports

Kemi Badenoch blocks India-UK FTA over visa demands, sparking debate among Tory colleagues and Labour negotiations.

Britain’s former business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch, who is the frontrunner to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party chief and Opposition Leader, has claimed that she blocked the India-UK free trade agreement (FTA) over demands for more visas, according to UK media reports.

The Nigerian heritage shadow minister, who is going head-to-head in an ongoing Tory membership vote with former Cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick, has indicated that one of the reasons the FTA could not be signed off by the Sunak-led Tory government was due to the Indian side expecting more concessions over the issue of migration.

“As business secretary, even as I was trying to do things to limit immigration, we had an India FTA where they kept trying to bring in migration and I said no. It’s one of the reasons why we didn’t sign it,” Badenoch reportedly told ‘The Telegraph’.

But some of her former Tory ministerial colleagues countered in ‘The Times’ that the claims are unlikely because Ms. Badenoch was pushing for a deal as she oversaw several rounds of negotiations towards an FTA expected to significantly enhance the GBP 38 billion a year bilateral trading partnership.

“Kemi just wanted to get a deal at all costs and didn’t really think that the objections that were being put forward were serious. She said they were ideologically driven, that they were impractical and weren’t conducive to good relations with the Indians," a former Cabinet minister was quoted as saying.

"Kemi wanted a trophy to show post-Brexit benefits and there was a zeal to achieve it,” the former minister said.

“The reality was, all the bargaining power was with the Indians and they had more leverage in negotiations than we did. There was a lot more pressure on us to do all the running, and they were quite nonchalant about doing a deal. That was where the balance of power lay and we were always starting from a weaker position,” the ex-minister said.