Boris Johnson – 2022 Statement Made in India

The statement made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, in India on 22 April 2022.

Good afternoon, before turning to the topic of visit we have had, the fantastic visit we’ve had here in India, I just want to say something about the latest situation in Ukraine.

Because I know everyone is deeply concerned about events, the barbarism we have seen, that barbarism by Vladimir Putin in the Donbas region, and in particular his brutal offensive against Mariupol, which is why yesterday I announced we would be sending more artillery and doing everything possible to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves those areas.

And at the same time, the extraordinary fortitude and success of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people in resisting Russian forces in Kyiv, means that I can today announce shortly, next week, we will re-open our embassy in Ukraine’s capital city.

I want to pay tribute to those British diplomats who remained elsewhere in the region throughout this period.

The United Kingdom and our allies will not watch passively as Putin caries on this onslaught.

And what I think we’ve seen here in New Delhi is one of the world’s oldest democracies, and the largest democracy, sticking together. And confronting our shared anxieties about autocracies and autocratic coercion around the world and acting together to make our countries safer and more prosperous.

Our new and expanded Defence and Security Partnership will enable India to strengthen its own domestic defence industry as well as protecting vital shared interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Our collaboration on energy security – including our new offer on offshore wind, the new UK-India Hydrogen Science and Innovation Hub and our joint work on solar power – will help to reduce our collective dependence on imported hydrocarbons in favour of cheaper, more sustainable home-grown renewables.

And our Global Innovation Partnership will help transfer climate and energy-smart innovations to developing countries across the wider Indo-Pacific.

As we deepen the partnership between our countries, we won’t just make our people safer, we’ll make them more prosperous too, creating new jobs, driving up wages, and driving down prices for consumers, all of which will helps with the cost of living.

And our partnership with India is particularly powerful in achieving these things because India is an incredible rising power in Asia, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world – already worth £2.25 trillion – and set to be the world’s third largest economy by 2050.

India is also our biggest partner in the Indo-Pacific, which is increasingly the geopolitical centre of the world, with two-thirds of humanity, and a third of the global economy – and that share is rising every year.

Indian investment already supports almost half a million British jobs, and with a population bigger than the US and the EU combined, there is so much potential for us to take our trade and investment to a whole new level.

On this visit alone we’ve secured new deals worth £1 billion, creating more than 11,000 jobs.

And perhaps most significantly of all, we’re using our Brexit freedoms to reach a bi-lateral Free Trade Agreement, and today Prime Minister Modi and I told our negotiators to get it done by Diwali in October.

This could double our trade and investment by the end of the decade, driving down prices for consumers, and increasing wages across the UK by as much as £3 billion.

So what we have been getting on with here is getting on with the job of delivering on the priorities of the British people, deepening a friendship with a nation with whom we have profound ties of culture, language and kinship, while making both our countries safer and our economies stronger.