Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward proposals to amend visa regulations to better enable highly skilled people to come to the UK to work in the space and satellite sector.

Our immigration rules for non-EU workers already cater for the highly skilled, including academics, scientists and researchers. Within the immigration system, we have consistently protected and enhanced the treatment of such roles, even whilst restricting migration in other spheres.

In Tier 2, the skilled work route, PhD level roles are given higher priority when allocating places within the annual limit and are exempt from certain of the usual recruitment and settlement rules. The Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) route is also available for world leaders in science, engineering, humanities, the arts and digital technology, and several universities and research organisations are making use of this route. The Tier 5 (Temporary Work) route contains provisions to enable sponsored researchers to participate in international research collaborations, and for overseas medical and dental post-graduates to undertake training in the UK.