Lord Bilimoria, the CBI president and Tory donor, has pressed for looser visa restrictions between India and the UK ahead of the formal launch of trade talks between the two countries this week.

The intervention of the Cobra beer founder, one of the UK’s most prominent British-Indian businessmen, comes as the International Trade Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, prepares to fly to Delhi in pursuit of a deal.

The peer said that “no one is asking for open borders” but added: “Mobility has historically been important and will continue to be important in both countries’ interests – and both ways.” Indian workers were granted more than 40,000 skilled worker visas in the year to June.

UKIP takes the view that if UK businesses need skilled workers, they should start training them. Industry is not owed a ready supply of cheaper labour. Moreover, we should not be taking business advice from Indian born Bilimoria.

In 2009 his Cobra Beer enterprise was forced into administration, but not before Bilimoria had negotiated what is known as a “pre-pack deal”, which enabled him to go into business with the US-based Molson Coors Company. This delivered him a multi-million annual dividend income, but left his 340 shareholders with losses of £71 million.

Although Bilimoria pledged to repay his debts, by 2019, when he was being groomed to take over the presidency of the CBI, The Times reported that families who had ploughed their savings into his business were still waiting for their money back. The situation had not dramatically improved by January 2021, when some creditors were still waiting to be reimbursed, with one saying that he had been “burnt alive” while the peer rose from the “ashes like a phoenix”.

Although Bilimoria said in 2019 that he was doing his “utmost” to pay back creditors and would do so for “as long as it takes”, The Times reported that creditors with insurance policies had been excluded, even though such policies typically pay out only a percentage of claims, leaving many out of pocket.

This is the calibre of the man that the CBI now deems fit to represent it on matters such employment, trade and immigration. And, in the latter area, Bilimoria has form which pre-dates his CBI presidency.

In February 2014, he spoke in the debate on the Immigration Bill, complaining about the government’s “madcap immigration cap policy” which targeting bringing down the immigration level “to the tens of thousands”. This, he declared, “is shooting ourselves in the foot”.

This latest intervention in the immigration debate is more self-serving than it is helpful. The “captains of industry”, as always, are looking after their own interests. And, as we have seen so often before, their interest and the interests of the nation are not always the same.