A passage to India | 3 November 2016

When a Prime Minister flies off abroad with a few business-leaders it is seldom worthy of comment. Such trade missions tend to achieve little, beyond generating headlines intended to flaunt politicians’ pro-business credentials. But with the impending departure of Britain from the European Union,-Theresa May’s visit to India next week, accompanied by Sir James Dyson and others, has huge significance. For the first time in four decades, a British Prime Minister can discuss doing trade deals — something which we have until now been forced to contract out to officials in Brussels.

Mrs May has chosen her destination shrewdly. With its rapidly expanding economy and the gradual liberalisation of economic policy, India is everything that the EU isn’t. It has the fastest-growing GDP of any large nation. Its people speak English. In this year’s World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness index, India jumped 16 places to number 39 — above Italy, Portugal and Greece. While it is still poorer than most western economies, it is the direction of travel that matters. It’s an opportunity economy, rather than one where fading industries are protected and propped up.

While the Prime Minister is to be congratulated on the initiative her trade visit to India represents, she will find upon arrival that there is much dismay at her plans to limit Indian students who wish to study in Britain. The inclusion of overseas students in the government’s net migration target of 100,000 a year will deprive our universities of much-needed money. In future, it will also mean losing what influence we derive from having educated those in positions of power abroad. A recent study found that one in ten world leaders studied in Britain.

The number of Indian students coming to study in Britain has plunged from 39,100 to 18,300 over the past five years, thanks to an overly restrictive visa system, which makes it hard for students to apply in the first place and subsequently tries to stop them from taking up jobs in the UK once they graduate.