UK’s senior-most Indian-origin minister Priti Patel on Tuesday asked British-Indians to vote to leave the EU in the June 23 referendum, saying the membership of politico-economic union puts barriers in trading with nations playing increasingly important role in the world.
Patel, who has a seat in the UK Cabinet as minister for employment and who also serves as Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘Indian Diaspora Champion’, has been one of the most vocal campaigners for Brexit - an abbreviation for “British exit” from the 28-member European Union.
“British-Indians and Asians should feel confident about voting to leave the EU in the forthcoming referendum,” she said in a statement.
Using the long-pending India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) as an argument in favour of her ‘Vote leave’ camp, she said: “While the UK remains a member of the EU, we are unable to work closely with India and other countries who are playing an increasingly important role in the world. The EU puts up barriers to trade and restrictions on imports.
“The EU has spent nearly a decade trying and failing to negotiate a trade deal with India. We want to work with these countries to share expertise and exchange goods and services, but the EU’s protectionist attitude and vested interests are blocking progress.
“After we Vote leave, the UK would be free to negotiate its own far-reaching trade deals with India and dozens of other growing economies. Our own connections and ties to those countries would mean we could use the expertise of the diaspora to negotiate a far better mutually beneficial deal than anything that the EU’s out-of-touch bureaucrats in Brussels could achieve.”
The 44-year-old Gujarati-origin Conservative party minister made a personal reference to how “parents and grandparents” established communities in the UK.
“They worked hard to give us a good future and play a positive role in British life. But while we remain a member of the EU, the businesses that we have worked hard to establish are at risk from costly red-tape and regulations from Brussels... By leaving the EU, we can replace EU red-tape with sensible rules that promote the entrepreneurial spirit that we have in abundance. We send 350 million pounds a week to Brussels, this is money that could be spent on our priorities like the (National Health Service),” she said.
Patel is in direct conflict with a group of around 15 British-Indian parliamentarians, led by Alok Sharma MP and including Keith Vaz, Shailesh Vara, lord Karan Bilimoria, Virendra Sharma and Seema Malhotra, who launched their own campaign as “British-Indians for IN” last month.