Science elite deterred by UK’s costly visas, says Wellcome chief

Top international researchers are being deterred from coming to the UK by steep visa costs, the new chief executive of the Wellcome Trust has warned.

Speaking to the media for the first time since he joined the UK’s largest biomedical research charity in January, John-Arne Røttingen said he was concerned that visa costs and the annual NHS surcharge had dissuaded many outstanding early career researchers from relocating to the UK.

Research groups were “still able to fill PhDs and postdoc positions but it is very hard to get people, and get the best people from abroad”, said Professor Røttingen, a former head of Norway’s research council who was founding chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the multinational vaccines consortium that came to prominence during the pandemic.

“It’s great to see the UK rejoin Horizon Europe but there should not be a cost barrier [to working as a researcher],” explained Professor Røttingen. “Given visa costs and the health surcharge, a family of four coming to the UK will pay, compared to France, a cost that is to a factor of four or five,” he added.

“For research to thrive, there needs to be open borders and opportunities for exchanges for researchers,” said Professor Røttingen, who was speaking at a Science Media Centre media briefing on 16 May.

According to the Royal Society, which has flagged its concerns over visa costs, an international researcher bringing a partner and two children to the UK will need to pay £23,791 for a five-year stay if they arrive on a standard Tier 2 skilled worker visa.

Professor Røttingen, who held academic positions at Harvard University and the University of Oslo, also drew attention to the “dire straits” in which UK universities found themselves, claiming academic clinical research was “under threat” from financial pressures on institutions.

“Universities have been able to grow [their research] by increasing international students – now that is challenged by the international environment [regarding recruitment] and potential policies [on immigration],” he said, claiming “politics has become more short-term in most countries”.

His comments come after Wellcome, which spent about £1.7 billion on research in 2022-23, of which two-thirds was spent in the UK, announced a new partnership with two of the world’s other largest charitable foundations – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Denmark’s Novo Nordisk Foundation, the charitable arm of Europe’s most valuable company, whose profits have soared in recent years thanks to sales of the weight loss drug semaglutide.

Each foundation will contribute $100 million towards a three-year initiative aimed at understanding the health impacts of climate change, infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance, and how nutrition affects immunity to disease.

Professor Røttingen has replaced Wellcome’s long-standing chief executive Jeremy Farrar, who ran the foundation for a decade before leaving to become the World Health Organization’s chief scientist last year.

Asked whether Wellcome could take a bigger role in highlighting the precarious situation of UK research, both privately inside government and in public, Professor Røttingen said he felt the foundation could play an important role, given that it was a “substantial investor in the life sciences sector”.

“What I am hearing is that university and academic leaders are calling for Wellcome to play a role because it is independent [of government funding],” he said, adding that “we are quite willing to take a position in public”.

“I believe that some friction and some disagreement help us to understand each other,” said Professor Røttingen, who reflected on his own run-ins with ministers while working in Norway, where he served as a government adviser.

“I was quite rude as a research advisor in Norway and was almost fired after telling them to roll the dice on a certain thing. I’m not polished – neither in my English nor my content.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com