‘Both Prime Ministers want FTA…Aasaan nahi hai, negotiations abhi baaki hai, mere dost’: British High Commissioner Alex Ellis at Idea Exchange

Thirdly, because the UK was altering its strategic course, having left the European Union. In S Jaishankar’s recent book, he says that by the time Brexit had come, it was time for a reset in the UK-India relationship. And we agreed.

Shubhajit Roy: You were one of the architects of the integrated review, which also had to update itself because of the conflict in Europe. On the strategic side, what has been the collaboration and cooperation between India and the UK?

First of all, the Indo-Pacific tilt is a lot more than just defence and security. We were very clear in the integrated review that it was economic, human, research and technology. On the defence side, there has been a very rapid growth in maritime cooperation. We have gone from having one very unadventurous ship visit a year to six warship visits to Indian ports last year, including very sensitive areas. We had the Indian Army doing probably the most complex exercise it has done to date with the British army.

All countries are having to adjust to the nature of China. We have to engage where necessary, for example, on climate change. We talk in greater depth and breadth with the Indian government about how to deal with geopolitical competition

On the defence industrial space, we’re not as big a player as some others. We have some great technology and capabilities. Electric propulsion — we propel most of our ships by electricity, and that works very well. We are one of the three countries in the world that can make very sophisticated jet aircraft engines. And Rolls-Royce has done some excellent work with the Indian government to think about the design of the next generation.

Shubhajit Roy: China’s behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region, especially in the maritime space, has been concerning. Could you give us a sense of whether India and the UK have come together to tackle this belligerence of China in specific concrete terms?

I think all countries are having to adjust to the nature of China. We have to engage where that’s necessary, for example, on climate change. There is no doubt we talk in much greater depth and breadth with the Indian government about how to deal with geopolitical competition, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. That is one of the big drivers of increased cooperation.

Shubhajit Roy: Two years after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the sanctions that the West had made didn’t have the kind of impact on the Russian regime that they had thought they would; we see Putin just got re-elected.

What you have is a grim war inside Ukraine and one in which people are being killed, including Indian nationals, entirely because of the Russian desire to take over their democratic neighbour. Putin got re-elected. If this is the year of democracy in 2024, I think the election in Russia reminds you of what a sham democracy looks like. It’s very important that autocratic might does not prevail, that’s why we support Ukraine in many different ways and why others are doing the same.

The UK is a place where things are debated freely… You have legal frameworks about how you go about what is freedom of expression… the limits of it. The attacks on the High Commission were absolutely not okay

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Shubhajit Roy: The conflict in the West Asian neighbourhood, between Israel and Hamas, has been going on since October last year. India took a very nuanced stance and tried to balance both sides. The UK took a very strong, supportive stance with Israel. Has that shifted in the recent months after the bombing of Gaza?

We were swift to condemn the attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and with good reason. We’re in a situation where we must find some kind of sustainable solution in Gaza. Most immediately we have to get the hostages out. We have to get more aid. The UK is a major supplier of humanitarian aid to Gaza but we are very tough with Israelis about allowing more access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, given the conditions there. We want to stop the conflict from escalating across the region, that’s why Foreign Secretary David Cameron is constantly in the region to try to reduce the risks of escalation. And also why we push for the long-term Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank and in Gaza and ultimately for a two-state solution.

British High Commissioner Alex Ellis

Shubhajit Roy: The peace process in West didn’t take into account the Palestinian stakeholders. In hindsight, do you think that could have made a difference if the Palestinian view was not ignored?

You obviously can’t have a sustainable peace in which Hamas is bordering Israel. You absolutely need to bring in the Palestinians and some of the other neighbouring states as well to make sure that you have a sustainable solution. That’s a tough thing to imagine at the moment with the situation in Gaza. That’s why you have to deal with the immediate humanitarian crisis to prevent the escalation, but also invest in long term peace.

Shubhajit Roy: The Diwali of 2022 was set as the target by both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Boris Johnson for the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Do you think they are anywhere closer to the time that it has been in the past?

Yes, we’re most definitely closer. Both Prime Ministers made it clear that they want a FTA. And they spoke only last week to reaffirm that desire for it. It’s not a straightforward negotiation because you have two similarly sized economies, but very differently shaped. The Indian economy is much more agriculture-based, obviously much poorer in terms of GDP per capita.

The UK economy is much more integrated in its manufacturing and its goods, with the rest of Europe because of the legacy of being a member of the European Union. People on both sides want to have real new market access. The UK-India trade has doubled since 2020. So actually, it’s grown a lot, but we can see economic advantage in having a trade deal.

Putin got re-elected. If this is the year of democracy in 2024, the election in Russia reminds you of what a sham democracy looks like. It’s very important that autocratic might does not prevail

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Amrita Nayak Dutta: India and the UK have been in talks about the Electric Propulsion System. Could you tell us the exact status of where it is? Rolls Royce is pitching fighter aircraft engines for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). India is in talks with the French Safran. Would you pitch aircraft fighter engines to the Indian Air Force in any of its future aircraft programmes?

Both these are examples of where the UK has very good technology and has a great interest in the Indian defence. Most of our ships are driven by electric propulsion, including our aircraft carriers. We have an electric propulsion working group and we spend a lot of time talking with the Indian government and companies on how to go about doing this. On the fast next-generation jet engine, the UK is one of the world’s centres of jet technology. We almost always do that in partnership…Rolls-Royce has done some excellent work for the Indian state on how one might go about designing that next-generation engine, and now we’ll see what the Indian state wants to do as it moves to the next phase.

British High Commissioner Alex Ellis

Anonna Dutt: What are the areas of research in the health sector that the UK is collaborating with India on? The second thing is about the network that India tried to create during its G20 presidency for local research and development and manufacturing of medicines and pharmaceuticals. There was a lot of resistance from the West and big pharma companies to that. What is the UK’s stand on that?

I think the best thing the UK and India have done for each other, for themselves and for the world, is the Covishield vaccine. That’s a great example of Indian manufacturing power and distributional capability, alongside UK research and then development by a Swedish-British company, AstraZeneca. The new malaria vaccine and the new Ebola vaccine that has come through are both Serum Institute and UK researcher collaborations. There’s actually a lot of pharma investment from India in the UK. Zydus, the pharma manufacturers in Gujarat, are manufacturing more in the UK. It’s actually quite a good collaboration between the two countries in the pharmaceutical sector. Openness is important. During the pandemic, when India stopped its restrictions on the sale of paracetamol, for example. Through the huge recovery trial, which the UK launched almost as soon as Covid started, of which India is one of the main non-British participants. If you look at the data, on what’s likely happened to diabetes incidence in the populations of India and the UK, we have a very big shared interest in doing more work together.

Nikhil Ghanekar: Concerning BBC and what happened last year when Indian authorities searched the premises of the BBC in Delhi after a documentary was aired on Prime Minister Modi. How did your office dealt with this issue?

Any kind of UK-India relationship will have its ups and its downs. I won’t go into the details, we talked a lot to the Indian government, we talked to the BBC, and they most importantly talked to each other about how to find the right way to respect the laws of India and operate as an independent news organisation.

Divya A: I wanted to bring you to the issue of restitution of cultural heritage, something that India attaches a lot of importance to, even taking it to a multilateral forum like G20.

So there are two sides to it. One is the smuggled antiquities, which of course is in the UN convention, there is the legal framework. There is also the ethical issue of the return of antiquities. The issue of restitution touches on India and other countries as well. That is not a static debate. In the case of the UK, some of the museums… the Glasgow Museum and if I’m not mistaken, the Manchester Museum, have done some restitution of artefacts of other museums around the world…This is part of a much bigger and interesting debate which is going on in the UK about its relationship with its colonial history…it’s extraordinary. I really didn’t learn any imperial history when I was a history student. I taught history as well. But I think that that is changing. It is part of the product of the great success and the great diversity of the United Kingdom of today.

British High Commissioner Alex Ellis (right) in conversation with Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor, The Indian Express (Express photo: Gajendra Yadav)

Divya A: It’s almost been a year since the Khalistani attacks on the Indian High Commission in London. How is the investigation going forward?

There are some bits of work which the police have done to make that premises, which is a very, very busy street, more secure. But you have to put that into a broader context. Which is basically a very good story, which is the flow of talented people from India to the UK, and the role which they play in life in the UK more generally. With that flow comes some trickier issues as well. There’s a much greater recognition now by the British authorities than there was maybe a few years ago, that we have to deal with all forms of extremism. This is the point our security minister made when he said that Khalistani extremism isn’t an India problem, it’s a UK problem, we don’t want our people to be radicalised.

Now, a lot of the best work for dealing with that is done upstream, not downstream. That’s why we have done a lot of work, actually, over the last year in terms of talking to the different communities in the UK, to make sure we continue to have a very harmonious country.

Shubhajit Roy: The issue of separatism which comes about on British soil. Do you think the polarised Indian politics here, because of the huge Indian diaspora, is now getting reflected on British soil?

The UK is a place where things are happily debated very freely. The government’s always very clear that it sees India as a very important partner for the long term. So you have legal frameworks about how you go about what is freedom of expression, what are the limits of it. Of course, there will be things said and done… the attacks on the High Commission were absolutely not okay. Sometimes it’s clear where a line has been crossed and then we act accordingly.

Ravi Dutta Mishra: You mentioned that ease of doing business has improved. But then we are seeing Vodafone really struggle in India. So are you looking forward to seeing a different bilateral investment treaty that both countries are discussing?

Vodafone and Cairn Energy have been two examples of economic thorns which we have managed to extract from the collective UK-India foot. One of the things that did happen during my tenure here is that the Indian government did a debt-for-equity swap with Vodafone, so the Indian state has equity in Vodafone-Idea that has given the company a new lease of life. So that they are now busy fundraising at the moment, having approved a strategy in their board meeting last month. Those are stories where the Indian government has decided to kind of grasp a nettle and has acted to enable companies to prosper.

Alongside the FTA, it would be good to have a Bilateral Investment Treaty. That is a treaty which needs to offer protections which are of value to investors. There’s a lot of investment between the two countries.

Ravi Dutta Mishra: We had a very crucial window that we missed to sign the free trade agreement because after our elections, UK elections will follow. All the fuss about mobility and concerns around visa, do you see the deal being signed by the end of the year?

Aasaan nahi hai, negotiations abhi baki hai, mere dost.

Shubhajit Roy: Three years. High points, low points?

Several high points because it’s such a great country to live in because of its incredible diversity. You get this great variety of food, and that’s something which, you know, I love about India.

Watching England being rolled over in Lucknow in front of 49,998 ecstatic Indians whilst me and my friends watched with our head in our hands as the England batsmen were just knocked over by the brilliant Jasprit Bumrah was perhaps a low moment. All countries have their highs and lows. India, maybe, is a little bit more intense with the highs, a little bit more intense with the lows. Being in a country, which is kind of where we wish the UK’s partnership is really motoring, is a great thing. It’s been fun—to be at the beginning of a real reset and driving at a different kind of partnership.