The Royal Society’s analysis of costs for equivalent visas in comparator countries is a good starting point here, even if it’s hard to make exact comparisons when the system is so complex and the cost of healthcare has to be accounted for.

An oral evidence session of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee was keen to understand whether there was demonstrable evidence that the UK’s expensiveness as a destination for work is harming international recruitment of researchers, and hence UK science. Cranfield University vice chancellor Karen Holford (also speaking for Universities UK) cited anecdotal evidence of the recent steep rise in both visa charges and the immigration health surcharge (IHS) putting off international postdocs:

When they see the cost which includes the upfront health surcharge, payable all in one go, often they’re not in a position to pay that – it is putting people off.

Committee chair Baroness Brown of Cambridge (also chancellor of Cranfield, funnily enough) wanted to know if this widely intuited observation could be translated into proper data of the sort that might help make the case to government. The feeling in the room was that there wasn’t one good source of data to draw on here, for PGRs let alone postdocs. Royal Society foreign secretary Alison Noble pointed out that to gather such information you’d want to speak to those who chose not to come, a hard demographic to reach.

But it’s probably worth the sector thinking about what something conclusive or at least strongly indicative would look like in making this point. At least those universities and academics wanting to recruit overseas researchers could be surveyed, perhaps?

While the committee was sympathetic, it’s deeply sad that for the government and wider policymaking landscape the Overton window on visa fees has shifted to this question of “yes, but is it damaging UK science, or are we getting away with it?”

The original argument for higher visa costs was that the Home Office system had to pay for itself – meaning that international researchers and students are subsidising the huge overspend elsewhere in the UK’s dysfunctional immigration apparatus, and of course there is no transparency to assess how the money is being spent.

The previous government then massively hiked the cost of both work and student visas, and the IHS, saying that the cash would fund public sector pay deals. There’s also the question of where the money goes from the immigration skills charge that employers must pay – surely if Labour is going to link up skills and migration it needs to get serious about spending this in a transparent way.

And, as the committee heard, there is a further pill that international researchers may need to swallow, stemming from the wider financial challenges that UK universities are facing – UUKi’s Harry Anderson said that a number of universities are reconsidering what support they can offer for staff coming to the UK (such as loans or upfront help with costs).

There seemed to be some cautious optimism that the forthcoming legal migration white paper might (just might, at this stage) revisit the inclusion of international students in migration targets and data presentation, such as by focusing more on permanent settlement.

But witnesses speaking to the committee were keen to stress the importance of the student-to-academic pipeline in UK science. A change to targets might depoliticise PGT recruitment, but would be unlikely to improve the system for students and researchers wanting to stay longer term in the UK.