“It’s the equivalent of saying the Premier League cannot hire any footballers who come from overseas. What would that do to high-quality football? It would disintegrate – and that is exactly what they are doing to us in science.”
Vital research into diagnosing and curing cancer is facing serious delays as international scientists increasingly turn down job offers due to prohibitively high visa costs.
Since 2019, the cost of immigration for scientists coming to the UK has risen by 126 percent, making it up to 17 times more expensive than in comparable countries such as the US, France, Australia, and South Korea. This financial burden is deterring world-class researchers from relocating to the UK, despite earlier hopes that Britain could attract top talent, particularly from the US, following cuts to American research funding under the Trump administration.
“What we are doing is slapping a huge immigration tax on them,” warned Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and director of the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It’s the equivalent of saying the Premier League cannot hire any footballers who come from overseas. What would that do to high-quality football? It would disintegrate – and that is exactly what they are doing to us in science.”
Cancer Research UK, one of the country’s largest private funders of medical research, reports that its spending on visa fees and related surcharges nearly doubled between 2022–23 – from £477,244 to £872,044. According to Dr Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, that amount could instead fund training for 40 PhD students.
Scientists have to pay the entire cost of the visa upfront, and it is later reimbursed by charities like Cancer Research UK. A scientist arriving on a five-year skilled worker visa would need to pay £6,694, and, with a five-year global talent visa, the cost is £5,941. Researchers with a family of four would therefore need to cover costs of more than £20,000.
At the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, 12 job offers were rejected by international candidates in 2024 alone. One research project investigating liquid biopsies for early detection of lung cancer was delayed for more than six months after a scientist turned down a role due to the financial strain of relocating his family to the UK.
In Scotland, a study using T-cells to attack colon cancer cells, research that could lead to breakthrough immunotherapies, was put on hold after another international hire fell through.
“High visa fees are putting off some of the world’s most talented scientists from coming to the UK,” Foulkes told the Observer.
Dr Ed Roberts, a group leader at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute, described how he lost a top candidate from Hong Kong in 2022 due to immigration costs. The role involved developing a genetic probe to identify vulnerabilities in tumours, critical work that was delayed for over two years.
“We had this very well-qualified candidate from Hong Kong,” Roberts said. “The salary was competitive, but the visa fees [and] the NHS surcharge gradually eroded what we were offering.
“He said ‘it doesn’t make sense for me to move my family from Hong Kong based on that’. So we had to put out another advert and recruit again.”
Eventually the team recruited a researcher from Brazil with no children. “Everything just got frozen and put away for a bit more than two years. We’ve now got several probes that are promising, but it is several years after,” Roberts added.
A government spokesperson told the Observer it was “committed to ensuring the UK remains the home for world-leading science and research.”
“Visa fees remain under ongoing review and all revenue generated is strictly ringfenced for funding the UK’s migration and borders system.”
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