Keir Starmer’s India Visit: Trade, Talent & the Path to Sustainable Growth

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has landed in Mumbai, India with a 125-strong delegation of CEOs, university leaders and cultural institutions in what Downing Street is billing as the largest UK trade mission to India, focused on executing the new trade deal and crowding in investment – not opening new visa concessions.

Starmer has stated that additional visas for highly skilled Indian workers are “not part of the plan.” The visit is trade-first; mobility continues via existing lawful routes (Students/Graduate, Skilled Worker, GBM: Expansion Worker, etc.)

The UK position is to deliver the signed deal and push business-to-business activity, not reopen migration asks. Some coverage notes headline projections on exports and tariff cuts; but the policy signal on visas remains unchanged today.

• Check SMS hygiene (role assignments, MFA, permissions), CoS accuracy (SOC codes, salary points, work locations, hybrid patterns), and record-keeping (Appendix D folders, RTW audit trail, recruitment evidence).
• Stress-test compliance controls: absence monitoring, duty-to-report events, and subcontracting/outsourcing risks.

• Map roles to Immigration salary list /SOC codes and confirm salaries meet the correct threshold methodology.
• For Indian businesses entering the UK, pressure-test GBM: Expansion Worker sequencing (UK entity setup → A-rating → CoS timing → start dates) and downstream conversion paths to Skilled Worker.

• Assume standard processing with limited or variable priority availability; plan onboarding dates accordingly.
• Build slack for advert changes, HR file remediation, CAS/ATAS or TB/Police cert quirks on individual cases.

• Focus on sectors likely to benefit from tariff reductions and trade flows (e.g., manufacturing/consumer, education links, aviation connectivity) and pre-plan compliant hiring for these verticals.