When is a change in immigration policy not a change in immigration policy? That seems to be the riddle posed by the reporting on the Government’s new trade deal with India.

What Britain is supposed to be getting out of it — a projected £4.8 billion boost to the economy via “big cuts to Indian tariffs on exports of whisky and cars” — is clear whichever source you’re reading. What India is getting, on the other hand, is a little harder to gauge.

The main sticking point in the previous government’s negotiations with New Delhi was that the latter’s demand was an immigration concession to make it easier for Indian workers to come and work in this country. One might normally expect Labour to fold on that sort of demand. But, notwithstanding the huge danger posed by Reform UK after the recent local elections, one can imagine why ministers might be resistant to the idea of importing lots of new Indian workers, many of whom will eventually reside here long enough to vote.

It was the Hindu vote, after all, which delivered the Conservative Party’s sole gain at last year’s general election in Leicester East, and which has made Bob Blackman’s Harrow East the safest Tory seat in the country. (At the start of the new Parliament he swore his oath on both the King James Bible and the Bhagavad Gita; the man knows what he’s doing.)

Officially, the Government says the new deal has been delivered without any changes to immigration policy. But even from the scant information which have so far appeared in the press, there are details which make this statement rather puzzling. According to the Times: “Ministers insist that the deal will not lead to an increase in visas from India to the UK but said businesses would benefit from a clearer and simplified approval process.”

In theory, that could simply mean businesses having an easier time bringing over the exact same number of Indian workers as now. But then there’s a second, and quite staggering, detail: “The UK has made key concessions to Delhi including an exemption from national insurance payments for Indian workers in Britain.”

It is not yet clear, but this exemption from NI must mean that these workers are not building up any entitlement to a state pension. This poses the question, however, of what will happen to those who end up staying in this country and reach retirement age without one., especially as they will now find it easier to bring dependants.

More crucially, it means that the Government has created a further incentive to employ Indian workers over British workers. As they are allowed to keep more of their income, they will be able to accept a lower headline salary and receive the same take-home pay. This will be doubly true if the NI exemption applies to employers. This would be logical if there is indeed no pension entitlement to be paying towards — but it has the same effect of making these workers much cheaper to hire.

If, on the other hand, there are still employers’ contributions, to what are they contributing? Structurally, NI is just a tax, and the state pension a welfare payment. But your entitlement to the pension is based on years of contribution. If employers are making contributions in these employees’ names, are they going to end up entitled to a state pension the rest of us have to pay for?

The Prime Minister has picked up the epithet “Two-Tier Keir” for his punitive measures following last summer’s riots, and as a result of the more recent row over the Sentencing Council’s guidelines. Unequal justice is sinister enough, but “tax breaks for migrant workers” may just be enough to put Nigel Farage in Number 10.

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Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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