This month I visited India with my colleague, Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, to discuss the UK-India trade talks and to meet our counterparts on the Indian side. India is the fifth largest economy in the world and an important trading partner for the UK. However despite India being one of the biggest investors in the UK it has historically been a high tariff economy, with limited access for foreign providers of services, for example Scottish Whiskey is famously subject to a 150% tariff. A UK-India trade deal is therefore potentially something that could be of significant benefit to the UK.

However, like any trade agreement to be worthwhile it must be a good deal for both sides. The Government began talks on a deal with India in January 2022. Boris Johnson originally promised these would be complete by October 2022 but this has proved wholly unrealistic. With both a UK and an Indian general election taking place this year, there is a feeling if the deal is not done in the next month it will be delayed into the next Parliament.

As well as the trade deal, the UK and India obviously have a shared history and over 1.5 million Britons are of Indian heritage. It was therefore extremely interesting to hold meetings and visits in New Delhi and Mumbai. We had excellent meetings with the Indian Foreign, Trade and Transport Ministers, as well as visiting the Indian Stock Exchange, Parliament and the famous Maidan public cricket pitches. I also met in Mumbai with Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, about the proposed closure of the blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks and my belief a better deal could be brokered. Everywhere we went there was a sense of dynamism and confidence, as India’s extraordinary economic growth continues.