‘U.K. missed golden chance to further relations with India’

Tim Hewish, who authored report advocating changes to the visa system, says government should have created a scheme like it did for the Chinese

There were hopes of a visa deal following Narendra Modi’s 2015 trip to the U.K. Here, Mr. Modi is seen with his British counterpart Theresa May during her visit to India.

Britain missed a golden opportunity to introduce a more favourable visitors visa for Indian nationals during Prime Minister Theresa May’s trip to India, according to the author of a recent report who advocated changes to the system.

Tim Hewish, Director of Policy and Research at the London-based Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS), who authored the report, said there was much disappointment following the government’s failure to offer a more attractive visitor visa to Indians on the lines of what has been created for Chinese citizens.

In January, the government launched a pilot that enables Chinese citizens — tourists, business people and those visiting family — to obtain a two-year visitor visa for just £85. Indian citizens currently pay £87 pounds for a six-month visa and £330 for a two-year visa. Many believed that with the U.K.-India Year of Culture set to take place in 2017, the scheme would be brought in.

“My expectations were quite high — it’s an easy proposal — creating something that already exists for China and doesn’t impact migration policy. It baffles me that an artist who came for an event in February and again six months later would have to pay for two visas or for the much more expensive two-year visa. It makes a mockery of the year of culture,” Mr. Hewish said in an interview here this week.

According to Crossbench Member of the House of Lords, Karan Bilimoria, there were hopes of such a deal even following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the U.K. in 2015. Mr. Bilimoria had repeatedly advised the government of the need to bring in the visa, which would have put India on an equal footing with China. The lack of action fed into increasingly negative perceptions of the U.K.’s openness to visitors, he said.

“Our Home Office is the biggest obstacle for Britain’s soft power — they are continually tarnishing our reputation internationally,” he said on Friday, pointing to the numerous instances he’d come across of people struggling to obtain visas, including one for a “senior Indian official.”

Mr. Hewish’s report released in July received much support from industry, including the CII and several international airlines, and politicians. In September, 56 business leaders, including senior executives of Virgin Atlantic, Heathrow, the Tata Group, and the Institute of Directors, and a number of politicians signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph , urging the adoption of the RCS’s recommendation on visitor visas.

Crucial boost

The RCS report argued that changing the visitor visa regime for Indians would give a crucial boost to numbers at a time that Britain was losing its share of India’s outbound tourist numbers, which was on the rise. France had overtaken Britain in terms of numbers of Indian tourists in 2015. “The trends show that while more and more Indians travel abroad, these travellers are choosing other destinations,” it said, adding that the move would enhance political, cultural and economic bonds between the two countries.

Mr. Bilimoria said that British government’s concerns about a widespread problem of people overstaying their visas were misplaced as the system they used to gauge this was by and large inaccurate. Only exit checks at the border would give a more accurate idea of numbers, and were likely to show the problem was much less severe than the government had been publicly estimating.

“There may be issues around people who overstay and how they are returned. But the idea that you can tarnish the whole of the population wanting to come to the U.K. as people who want to overstay creates the wrong environment for wanting to create a trade deal,” Mr. Hewish said.