Family Migration (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I want to focus on a particular aspect of family migration: the recruitment of researchers and technicians from overseas, under the global talent and skilled worker visa programmes. I emphasise “recruitment”. Unlike the determination to block immigrants as such, at least part of our current Government positively want to attract large numbers of such talented scientists, technicians and engineers.

The noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, told the House last week, in reiterating the Government’s optimistic claim that they will make the UK a science superpower by 2030—that is to say, in seven years’ time—that

“bringing in overseas talent via the visa system”

is vital to that aim. He added that the number of researchers in key science subjects

“will have to increase by around 380,000, and overseas talent will be a very big piece of that”.—[Official Report, 13/9/23; col. 1008.]

That is what DSIT thinks, as perhaps do the Department for Business and Trade and DfE. The Home Office is pushing hard in the opposite direction.

The visa system is designed to keep families out. It will discourage any applicant with a family from coming. Visa charges have been raised several times in the past 10 years. In addition, an immigration health surcharge was introduced in 2015, initially at a modest £200 a year. This autumn, the health charge will rise from £634 to £1,065 a year, with a discounted rate for children of £776 a year. That is an increase of roughly 400% since 2015. It is payable for an incoming scientist’s partner and children and payable up front, on arrival. Alongside this, the visa charge will be raised by a further 20%, also payable up front on arrival on behalf of the researcher and all their dependants. Someone who has been offered a post at a salary quite likely to be under £50,000 a year will be charged up to £25,000 a year at the point of entry.

The Government have abandoned all pretence that these payments are assessed on the basis of regaining direct costs. The rise in visa charges has been justified by the Home Office as helping to pay for the cost of police forces and border services. The increase in the health charge has been hailed in official government statements as contributing to the cost of offering doctors an increase in pay. These charges are far higher than those imposed by comparable countries with which we are competing for this sort of talent.

We are already in a situation in which graduate students who come to study in this country are pressed to leave their family behind: acceptable perhaps for a nine-month course but agonising for people with partners and children staying much longer. For post-doctoral researchers—precisely the people we want to attract—we are expecting some of the world’s most talented scientists to leave their families behind when they come here to support the UK’s scientific ambitions, or to mortgage their first year’s salary to pay these upfront costs.

Some in government have suggested that universities should pay these extra charges themselves if they really want to attract such talented people, or that grants for research should have to include funds to defray these additional costs—taxing universities and grant-giving foundations to avoid having to pay for public goods out of our own taxes. These people will be paying UK taxes from when they start to work here. In effect, they will be paying twice for health services and, if they want to renew their visa after five years, they will have again to pay a similar amount up front.

This represents a total contradiction in government policy: the Home Office doing all it can to keep talented people out while universities and research centres, with the Government’s active encouragement, are trying to bring them in. I first came across this mess when my son returned from 10 years working in the United States with an American wife. Some of his friends from Cambridge, working in some of the best American universities, decided to stay in the USA because of the way they thought the British Government would treat their American wives and children if they accepted posts back here.

I understand that the Home Office does not always pay much attention to other aspects of government policy. I know that there are many on the right of the Conservative Party who are hostile to universities as hotbeds of leftie intellectuals. They are happy to undermine their finances and unconcerned about universities’ scientific ambitions. But sensible Ministers, such as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, will want their Government to rediscover strategic planning and coherent policy. So I ask the Minister to take this back and tell his colleagues that these increased charges discourage British researchers from returning from abroad and foreign researchers from coming to work here. It is bad enough being nasty to the families of refugees; it is counterproductive to make talented people we want to attract to the country pay through the nose for the privilege of a family life while working here.