British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's assertion that outsourcing jobs to India will benefit the British economy has been attacked by the head of a leading British trade union.

"If British companies benefit from working with Indian service providers in Bangalore and elsewhere, then Britain as a whole benefits," Straw said in a weekend speech during his visit to India.

"Globalisation creates jobs in India but it creates jobs in Britain too."

Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage

"The overwhelming evidence is that open economies, where business can make its own decisions unhampered by protectionist barriers and bureaucratic over-regulation, prosper more than closed ones. So we will not practice protectionism at home."

His comments have angered David Fleming, leader of the giant Amicus union who says Straw's speech suggests "This government is happy to allow thousands of UK jobs to flood out of this country".

"If Jack Straw believes that he has found the answer to the problem of offshoring thousands of UK jobs, Amicus would love to see his evidence.

"He is obviously well ahead of the DTI  (Department of Trade and Industry) who are commissioning a report into offshoring and most major enterprises who are offshoring. Amicus believes that government ministers should not try and pre-empt the result of the DTI's report."

Last week British union leaders reacted with fury to news that calls to National Rail Inquiries were to be shifted to Mumbai and Bangalore as part of a new £100 million contract.

One British union leader described the decision as "bonkers." Another, Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, said,  "We are not convinced by the argument that exporting these jobs is economic in the long-term. Who is going to pick up the social costs of call centre workers in the UK when they lose their jobs?"

Union disquiet over outsourcing comes hand-in-hand with other reports that some Indian IT staff are being used by organised crime in the UK to hack into the computer systems of British firms.

Richard Hollis, managing director of London-based Orthus, an information security solutions company in London says there is an increasing problem as Indian staff gain access to increasingly sensitive customer information.

He said, 'We're seeing a significant increase in security problems associated with this type of outsourcing. Given that the majority of hacking originates from within organisations, outsourcing administrative responsibilities to an engineer making around £4,000 annually is asking for problems.

"The engineers employed by these firms are extremely skilled technicians and since they already possess the passwords and unrestricted access to the networks they service, they have quickly become targets for organised crime and private investigative firms looking to buy their way into a network."

A spokesman for the National Outsourcing Association in Britain said, "This shows that there are some things that you really should not send overseas. For organised criminals, this is godsend.