THE FREE trade agreement with India is another kick in the teeth for the British worker.
After three years of talks, the government has proudly announced a deal that will allow Indians working in this country to avoid paying National Insurance for up to three years, meaning that hard-working Brits who pay their taxes will now be left to foot the bill for yet more foreign nationals. When will this largesse in our name end?
The agreement, announced on Tuesday, has been touted by the government as bringing in ‘£25.5billion a year by 2040’ to the UK economy, on the basis that it will allow exports to India to expand. While international trade has always been critically important for Britain, will this deal really make us all better off? How much additional money will go to the Exchequer once the increase in population that the deal will also lead to is factored in?
This is a trade deal that will tip the scales of migration numbers only in one direction: the so-called ‘Double Contributions Convention’ that the government has said means workers ‘will only be liable to pay social security contributions in one country at a time’, is clearly designed to benefit Indian migrants in Britain and not the other way around.
There are nearly two million Indian nationals in Britain, while there are no clear data on how many British nationals live in India. The last time any statistics were published on this was in 2006, when there were just 37,700 British nationals living in India. The idea that this will benefit both countries is for the birds – the average annual salary in India is less than £4,000. In Britain it is about ten times this, with the additional attraction of a massive welfare system. The flow of people is going to go only one way.
The crux of the matter is how unfair this deal is for British workers. Already being called the ‘two-tier tax’, the agreement means Indian nationals will be allowed to pay their social security in India rather than in Britain, so they will benefit for three years from the lower Employee Provident Fund (EPF) of 12 per cent, compared with the British 15 per cent National Insurance Contribution (NIC). Indian workers will be able to enjoy the higher British salaries and the lower Indian social security payments, leaving British workers to pay for the increased cost of yet more migrants in their country. Let’s not forget that anyone here for even short periods can register with a GP.
If the main source of funding for our health system is now being cut off at source, and instead re-routed to India, then we can kiss that £25billion goodbye. It will be swallowed up by a National Health Service that is already burdened by hundreds of millions of pounds of health tourism, the cost of translating for thousands of migrants and a host of other costs resulting from growing demand as thousands of new arrivals will be entitled to receiving free healthcare while not being expected to pay their fair share, merely the annual health surcharge of £1,035 per annum for adults (less than £800 for under-18s). That’s not even mentioning the additional burden an inflow on this scale will force on to housing, infrastructure, school places, and all the struggling services we used to enjoy.
With all these incentives for Indian workers to come here, and the clear absence of any intent or will of Sir Keir Starmer’s government to cut immigration – legal and illegal – the writing is on the wall, with added impetus given to the speed with which our borders are crumbling to dust.
All trade deals carry a price and this one is no exception. For years, we have seen India pressing for looser visa rules for its nationals. As far back as 2010, as we detailed at Migration Watch, the proposed EU-India Free Trade Agreement would have led to an unlimited number of specialist workers coming to work in Britain, blowing a hole in Britain’s immigration controls. Not only this, but at the time, the deal would have allowed major Indian companies operating in the UK to bring in workers from wherever in the world the company was operating, facilitating a displacement of UK workers from jobs, while undercutting wages and outsourcing British jobs.
It seems at least some of those demands mean India has, finally, achieved its goals with this deal. The original dangers of this trade deal are rearing their head again. More work permits will be issued to Indians – 81,000 were handed out last year – taking the number of Indians in the UK over the two million mark. This flies in the face of the government’s promise to reduce immigration from its catastrophically high levels.
This is why the government’s reiteration that they are ‘taking back control’ of Britain’s borders can only be met with scepticism and hollow laughter. It is a smokescreen to hide the real problem with immigration, which is the uncontrollable and runaway scale of legal migration. Last year just under a million long-stay visas were issued, predominantly to workers and international students who stay for years or indefinitely, many of them being joined by dependants.
Why does this further loosening of the border concern me? I have referred to this before, but it really does merit repetition. Our population is growing at phenomenal speed and is now driven entirely by migration (migrants and their children). The ethnic minority proportion of the population quintupled in just 30 years as the proportion of native British shrank just as rapidly. Fifteen years ago, the majority – the native British – were projected by David Coleman, emeritus professor of demography at Oxford University, to fall below 50 per cent by the mid-2060s. With the unprecedented inflows of the past 15-20 years this point is clearly going to be reached much sooner. The day of a minority majority is approaching rapidly. A child born today to native British parents will likely find themselves a minority in the country of their parents and forebears before their mid-30s. Have you ever agreed to this? Have you ever been asked, for that matter? I thought not.
