Immigration

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, for introducing this debate in such an eloquent way. I shall focus on the impact of the immigration cap on scientific research. Here, I can only re-emphasise many of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller.

Yesterday, the Chancellor emphasised his commitment to the science base and to spending on medical research, but the Government's current policy on immigration seems designed to run in exactly the opposite direction. If you want an example of globalisation, you do not need to look at the banking or financial world; you should look at the scientific world. Science is the most international of activities and it knows no boundaries—or at least it did not until we put up these barriers to free flow of the scarce talent that makes up the scientific community. Although we are in a competitive market, we are also extremely fortunate in the UK, because the high quality of our research can attract the best. Three recent Nobel prizes speaks volumes and, as a loyal Mancunian, I am delighted with the success of our two physicists in Manchester. However, both of those physicists came from Russia, and it is quite likely that at least one of them might have been prevented from coming here because he could not have fulfilled the criteria now needed to gain access.

I must step back a moment to expose my bias and interest as scientific adviser to the Association of Medical Research Charities and as a trustee of a number of medical research charities, but you do not have to be as biased as me to recognise the value of research both to society and to the economy of the country. Your Lordships will remember the calculation a year or so ago showing that we get a return of 37 per cent a year on every pound that we invest in medical research. A recent publication from an impeccable source, Haskel and Wallis—you cannot get more impeccable than the son of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel—showed that if research funding decreased by £1 million a year, GDP would fall by £10 million.

So the question now arises why we should be threatening the very basis of excellence in research. Let me give your Lordships some examples of the damage being caused even now by application of the cap to scientists. At the Sanger Institute, which the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, mentioned, research into the human genome leads the world and it is already the home of at least one Nobel prize. Currently, there are 19 non-EU scientists working—I make it 19, rather than 17—of whom only four would meet the new criteria to gain a visa. Previously, your PhD counted for quite a lot of points and your salary relatively few. Now, qualifications count for less and earnings count for more—more than most post-docs can ever hope to earn. The problem is compounded because visas last only three years while most research posts are for four years, so if you are already here you have to apply again for your final year, and as the criteria have changed in the mean time you are very likely to be thrown out before you have finished your research. For tier 2 posts, one has to advertise in the local jobcentre, to give the locals a chance to apply. It is hardly a surprise that, for the 64 vacancies advertised by the Sanger last year locally, it received not one application. Of course, there are very few zebrafish geneticists or bioinformaticians hanging around jobcentres these days. What a waste of time and resource. You can get such expertise only by an international search. The Beatson Cancer Institute in Glasgow has been allocated just one visa application, but the Beatson, which attracts an average of five new non-EU immigrant scientists a year already has an American, Canadian and an Israeli working there, who will need another visa to complete their four-year programme, so it is placed in an impossible position.

At the Rutherford Appleton laboratory, a collaboration with the Japanese physical research institute, in which scientists are constantly exchanged, is severely threatened. This type of story can be repeated for every major research institute across the country. It is an outcome that can hardly have been the Government’s intention when they introduced this cap. Will the Minister look again at how the system could be made less damaging to research, which the Government say that they are keen to support? It cannot be that difficult.