While both countries have refrained from announcing a deadline after missing an ambitious Diwali target date last year, the union commerce ministry earlier this month said officials are going to continue negotiating till the end of August which will be followed by stock-taking at a “higher level”.

Badenoch said India and the UK have closed most of the deal’s chapters.

“But as is with any kind of negotiating, the last bit is the toughest bit… We need to make sure that when the deal is done, it is something that is mutually beneficial to both India and to the UK,” Badenoch stated.

Mint had earlier reported that both countries are set to take up contentious parts of the agreement such Intellectual property rights (IPR), rules of origin and investment protection in August.

Talks on IPR are crucial, as India is the world’s largest provider of generic drugs, accounting for a fifth of global supply, including to the UK’s National Health Service. Generics make up 70-80% of the domestic retail market. In contrast, the UK is a world leader in life science innovation and wants strong IPR protection. On the Indian demand to allow more skilled Indians to temporarily live and work in the UK, the British trade minister said: “For work, Indian visas are a third of the visas that the UK grants. Also a third of student visas go to India. And a third of visitor visas go to India.” “So what we’re not going to do is just create a sort of a blanket opener. What we’re doing is looking at what your requests for visas are: can we accommodate them? And what in exchange will we be getting?”

On negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty — another contentious area — Badenoch said the one negotiated in the 90s has now expired. But “people who started things under it are still covered” and the new BIT would be about “what happens to the new entrants or the new businesses who are coming in”.

She did not name any companies, but India has a history of losing tax disputes with major firms such as Vodafone and Cairn India, often involving huge sums — something New Delhi wants to avoid.

On India’s model BIT, she said: “We always say as the UK we respect other countries’ sovereignty. And it’s one of the things that I discussed,” with commerce minister Piyush Goyal and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

“She (Sitharaman) gave me a little bit more context as to some of the issues that have occurred not just with the UK but what they’re trying to prevent…. actually the approach we take is we look at the problem that needs resolution, and then we work to solve that problem, rather than working to copy-and-paste exactly what we had before, which isn’t going to be possible,” she added.

On the dysfunctional World Trade Organization appellate body, Badenoch said that smaller countries are the ones which are most at risk from the absence of a proper dispute settlement mechanism. “That is one of the reasons why it is the number one agenda item for the (WTO) ministerial conference that will be taking place in the UAE in February.”

Mint reported earlier that India may no longer stick to the template for bilateral investment treaties (BIT) that it adopted after terminating most of these treaties in 2016 and that the change in the approach comes at a time when India is negotiating investment treaties alongside free trade agreements with some top trading partners, including the UK and EU.

The union government had annulled BITs which were based on old model texts framed back in 1993 after receiving adverse judgments in multi-billion dollar investor-state disputes in international courts. To prevent this, the model BIT included “exhaustion of local remedies” as a clause which in effect emphasized state rights over investor rights.

On the issue of possible concessions for Scotch whisky by India, the trade minister said that the UK already sells quite a lot of scotch whisky to India and that the deal will be different from the one India has signed with Australia.

“So what Australia was doing, I think, was slightly different in that it was relatively new for them. We have a lot of asks across the board on goods and services, the same for India as well,” she added.

Updated: 31 Aug 2023, 11:09 PM IST