Good morning. Yesterday the government was able to announce some good news – a major trade deal with India.
There is cross-party consensus that trade deals are a good thing, the last Conservative government was working on a trade deal with India too, and at least some Tories were happy to welcome the deal.Oliver Dowden, the former deputy PM, posted thison social media.
AndJacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary who is on the opposite wing of the party to Dowden, postedthis.
But Dowden and Rees-Mogg did not get the memo about the official opposition line. As reported on the blog yesterday afternoon,Kemi Badenochdecidedto attack the dealon the grounds that it includes a double contribution convention, which means that Indian workers temporarily living in the UK will not have to pay national insurance contributions for three years – with British workers inIndiabenefiting in the same way. Crucially, Badenoch found an effective means of putting a negative spin on this relatively niche feature of the deal – she described it as “two-tier” taxation, involving “tax refunds for Indians not available to us”.Nigel Farage,the Reform UK leader, was quickly making the same argument too, claiming the government was making it 20% cheaper to employ an Indian worker than a British worker. Ina videohe said the deal was “appalling”, and claimed it showed Labour had “in a big, big way betrayed working Britain”.
Badenoch has certainly been successful at landing her message with the rightwing papers. Here are some of today’s front pages.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been giving interviews this morning. His main task was to counter the Tory/Reform UK claims and he insisted that double contribution conventions were a routine feature of trade deals, applying to just a sub-category of workers (employees from firms with operations in both the UK and India, seconded temporarily from one country to another), and that the British workers were not being undercut. The Tories andReform UKwere “confused”, he said.
He told the Today programme:
Asked whether the agreement meant Indian workers paying less tax than British counterparts doing the same job, Reynolds told the programme: “No.”
In an interview with Sky News, Reynolds said that the trade deal would generate more than £1bn in extra tax revenues for the Treasury. He said the double contribution convention would cost “less than a tenth of that”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am:Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, gives a speech in Cardiff marking one year to go until the next Senedd elections.
9.45am:Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, gives a speech to the CyberUK conference in Manchester.
10.30am:John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech in Edinburgh on SNP strategy running into next year’s Holyrood elections. Anas Sarwar, the ScottishLabourleader, is also giving a speech this morning, at 10.45am, as is the Scottish Consevative leader, Russel Findley, at 12.30pm.
10.55am:Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, attends a ‘Turning of the Page Ceremony’ in the Commons, with the book of remembrance naming MPs killed in both world wars, as part of the VE Day 80th anniversary celebrations.
Noon:Keir Starmer facesKemi Badenochat PMQs.
Lunchtime:Rachel Reeves, the chancellor is visiting a Scotch whisky distillery near Edinburgh to promote the UK-India trade deal (which cuts tariffs on whisky exports to India).
2.30pm: Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence toan infected blood inquiry hearingabout compensation payment arrangements.
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