The UK immigration system is holding us back in the fight to beat cancer

Through 2023 and early 2024, the last UK Government implemented changes to the immigration system to make it harder to come to the UK. Early data from the Home Office suggests that these changes are already having an impact, with fewer visas being issued in early 2024. 

This has big implications for UK science. Analysis by the Royal Society has revealed that UK visas are now considerably more expensive than visas for other top research nations, like the US, Germany and Japan. The Global Talent visa, which is designed to help exceptional researchers come to the UK, now costs 1,583% more than the average for dedicated researcher visas in leading science destinations. 

The new Government has set itself missions to improve the UK’s health and kickstart sustainable economic growth – and it has acknowledged that life sciences are key to both. Helpfully, the UK is already renowned for spearheading world-leading life science research, but, to achieve its goals, the Government needs to ensure we can continue to attract world-leading researchers. That means addressing the growing issues around immigration. 

To better understand those, we’ve collected evidence from the four Cancer Research UK institutes on their experience with international recruitment. The findings are stark: 

• Our modelling suggests that immigration costs will increase by 44% to £700,000 annually. In terms of total cost, that’s the equivalent of training 17 new Cancer Research UK PhD students every year. 
• The challenges of navigating the immigration system mean fewer talented researchers from across the world are applying to work at our institutes. 

To stop these developments damaging UK research, we’re urging the new Government to reverse the recent visa fee increases and initiate a full-scale review of the impact of the immigration system on the country’s ability to recruit international researchers. This review should look at the visa systems of all countries and examine further options to cut fees and attract scientific talent.

You can read our recommendations in full in our report. This article will introduce them and put them in context.

Why do we need international researchers to beat cancer?

As we set out in Longer, better lives, and our research workforce policy paper, we need to fill important roles across all stages of the career pipeline, including PhD students, managers, technicians and field leaders. To do that, we need to increase our capacity to train UK researchers and attract more talent from other countries. 

But it’s not just about filling workforce gaps. Step into any lab and you’ll find researchers from across the world. Why? Because they’re taking on a challenge bigger than any single country. Cancer is global, diverse and fast-moving. Isolated research groups can’t do as much about it as connected ones.  

There is good evidence that moving around the world is beneficial for researchers, their research and the places they work. When they come to the UK, international researchers bring knowledge and skills honed in different places, which they can even use to help train their UK colleagues. They also create connections between their old and new labs, giving us opportunities to set up cross-border collaborations. All of this helps our institutes answer the toughest questions around cancer, leading to discoveries that support longer, better lives across the country and around the world. 

So, what does this mean for our research? 

Our institutes are world-leading places to conduct cancer research, and they’re affiliated with some of the top universities in the UK. They’re respected internationally and value international talent, so a high proportion of their research staff come from other countries. But all four of them reported that visa costs are making it harder to recruit the global talent they rely on. Because the barriers to working in the UK are so high, they’re all seeing a drop off in high quality applications from across the world. 

Changes made by the previous Government have increased the costs of: 

• a 5-year Skilled Worker visa by 22% to £11,933 
• a 5-year Global Talent visa by 58% to £5,891 
• the Immigration Health Surcharge by 66% to £1,035 per year (this must be paid for all years upfront) 

In the financial year before the increases (2022/23), immigration costs were already nearly £480,000 across our four institutes. Modelling shows that obtaining the same visas this year would cost £210,000 more – a 44% increase to nearly £700,000. For us, that’s the equivalent of funding 17 PhD students every year. It’s not the same pot of money, so it’s only an illustrative comparison, but that training sets people up for entire careers contributing to life-saving cancer research.

These costs are covered by institute core funding, lab group research grants, the host universities and individual researchers. Visa cost increases are therefore reducing the money going towards cancer research projects and institute core functions that support it. The effect is clearest on the Francis Crick Institute, which is now projected to spend half a million pounds on visas every year. 

The impact on researchers and other international staff is also significant. Typically, they need to pay their visa fees upfront to move to the UK. They’re then partially or fully reimbursed once they start work. We heard from one prostate cancer researcher at the CRUK Manchester Institute who had to borrow over £2,100 from their family to meet upfront costs. 

Meanwhile, other leading science nations can offer international talent similarly fantastic opportunities for much less money. To take one example, the CRUK Cambridge Institute is struggling to compete for specialists with computational cancer centres in Germany, where a researcher visa costs only £172, less than 3% of the UK price. 

This situation is unsustainable for UK science. As the new Minister for Science, Patrick Vallance, recently highlighted, costs need to come down for the UK to attract the talent we need. Making it cheaper for researchers to come to the UK would also ensure more of the money raised by our supporters goes towards beating cancer. 

Challenges in navigating the visa system

The Government increased the minimum salary threshold for the Skilled Worker visa in April this year. This is the main route used by our institutes, and until then they were using it to hire international talent for important roles like technicians, whose salaries are now below the threshold. These people may not be able to apply to work in the UK through other routes, so UK labs could now struggle to find all the staff they need to function optimally. 

Importantly, different UK research organisations also have different levels of understanding of the UK’s immigration route for outstanding individuals in research and other fields, the Global Talent visa. The evidence from our institutes suggests this is due to an absence of clear information about how the Global Talent visa works and confusion caused by the language used to explain it. That’s despite the fact the route was expressly designed to attract specialists who can work in vital sectors like research. To make the most of the Global Talent visa, the Government needs to do more to help research organisations use it.  

What cancer research needs from the UK Government 

We’re publishing this data today to demonstrate that the UK Government needs to act as soon as possible to make sure the immigration system doesn’t thwart its ambitions for the country’s health and economy. Its stated missions depend on bringing the brightest and best to the UK, but the costs and challenges of coming here are stopping that happening. In fact, we’ve found that the immigration system is directly taking money away from our work to better prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. These impacts are mirrored across the research sector. 

As such, we’re urging the UK Government to:

• reverse the increases to immigration costs (including upfront costs) so that we can compete with other leading research nations 
• assess whether UK research organisations can access visas for all the vital roles they need to recruit, and take action to cover any gaps
• take a comprehensive approach to improving awareness and understanding of the Global Talent visa 

Read our full evidence paper and recommendations.  

This work has built on our existing recommendations for the new UK Government in Longer, better lives: our programme for UK Government and our policy paper: Strengthening the UK research workforce to beat cancer.