Recommendation 13

Scottish universities are inherently international institutions; international collaborations play a big part in their successes. In addition, Scottish universities act as much-valued international hubs in their local communities, bringing important cultural benefits. Scottish universities’ internationalisation agenda should therefore be supported. The UK Government has a major role to play in this in terms of how it develops its foreign and immigration policies. The UK Government should be praised for introducing the post-study work visa, which plays a key role in attracting, and then retaining, the brightest and best students from overseas. The Global Talent visa is also very welcome, but its cost should be addressed. Wellcome has highlighted that, for an international academic with a spouse and children to move to the UK, it would cost around £13,000 for visas (and associated costs) to work in the UK under a five-year Global Talent visa, compared to around £1,000 in France. In order to allow Scotland to remain competitive and attractive to the best international research talent, who can bring so much to our economy and society, the UK Government should reduce the cost of visas for international researchers and their families, to a level competitive with countries such as France. If the UK Government decides not to reduce the cost of the Global Talent visa (and associated costs for the families of ‘lead’ applicants), the UK Government should seek to justify the reasons for these high fees in comparison to other countries. The UK Government should also take a pragmatic approach to researcher visa extensions, especially in light of covid-19, which has caused unavoidable delays to some research projects.