Taiwo Popoola
The British trade minister on Wednesday defended a contentious tax break for some Indian workers agreed as part of a landmark free trade agreement with India, saying the idea that he had undercut British workers was “absolute nonsense”.
The trade deal, which includes a range of tariff cuts on British imports to India, also exempts some short-term workers from India from paying into Britain’s social security system for three years.
Urban Express News Online reports that the exemption under the so-called Double Contributions Convention also applies to British workers in India, but while Britain barely made mention of this element of the trade deal, India hailed it as a “huge win”.
British opposition parties also accused the government of signing up to a deal that would unfairly benefit India.
“This is absolute nonsense… No-one is being undercut. If you are a business that needs to temporarily put your staff in the UK or India, if you are a UK business, it’s a little bit easier to do that,” Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told LBC Radio, stressing that Britain had similar agreements with 50 other nations so that workers didn’t have to make contributions in two countries at one time.
Reynolds also told other media that the changes would affect a “very small number” of people.
The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, which is currently leading in the opinion polls, said the government had “sold out British workers”.
He said, without elaborating, that Indian workers and firms would pay 20% less tax than their British counterparts.
India said during negotiations that its workers and companies should not pay social security contributions on staff if they lived in Britain for fewer than three years because they would have to make social security payments in both countries.
British officials could not initially say how many Indian workers would benefit or how much it would cost the British government in lost revenue.
Official data shows Britain granted more than 81,000 work visas to Indians last year, more than any other nationality, although many represent health and care or other non-temporary workers who would still be expected to pay social security in Britain.
