Stem Visa policy jeopardises economic growth and amounts to 'act of national self-harm' says Lords Committee

The Government is committing an ‘act of national self-harm’ by pursuing a visa policy which deters the brightest and the best STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) talent from coming to the UK, the influential House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has warned.

Its stark message comes after analysis showed that high up-front visa costs, coupled with an inflexible immigration system, were putting the UK at a severe competitive disadvantage.

The country was now in a situation where talented Masters and PhD students, as well as early-career researchers, scientists and tech experts were spurning the UK - depriving it of vital talent, particularly in fields like AI, peers said.

Meanwhile, the detrimental policies were also having a harmful impact on business as well as on charities such as Cancer Research UK which is braced for additional visa costs of £700,000 annually, taking money away from life-saving research.
The UK urgently needs overseas expertise to drive its economic growth and enable the country to compete with global powerhouses like the US.

In a letter to the Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Science Minister, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, the outgoing chair of the cross-party Lords Science and Technology Committee, highlighted that UK visa costs had surged by up to 58 per cent, now surpassing those of any comparable country.

The requirement for someone to pay the full Immigration Health Surcharge up-front for the duration of a visa could result in an initial bill running into tens of thousands of pounds, the letter says.

“This is a huge deterrent to postdoctoral researchers,” said Baroness Brown, an engineer with a career spanning senior engineering and leadership roles in industry and academia.

She added: “We understand that the Government was elected on a pledge to reduce overall immigration … but the ‘Global Talent’ visa (designed to help exceptional researchers come to the UK) only accounts for around 4,000 people a year.”

Peers also cautioned that cutting the number of international students had far-reaching consequences. Many higher education institutions relied on international student fees to cross-subsidise domestic teaching and scientific research, and the Government must mitigate the consequences of its actions, they said.

The Lords Committee heard that applicants to postgraduate taught courses at Cranfield University, a specialist postgraduate university in Bedford, had declined by 47 per cent in just two years.

Peers called on the Government to review a ban surrounding international students bringing dependants with them, and for it to consider whether granting exemptions would actually result in a net benefit for the UK.

The Committee recently published a report on engineering biology, a cutting-edge science that redesigns nature to solve real-world problems. The report emphasised that opportunities in this field, too, were at risk of being squandered unless the Government took steps to improve apprenticeships and attract global expertise.