The skilled worker visa and higher education staff

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee is currently writing up a report on the impact of changes to skilled worker visas which took place in spring 2024. It’s a testament to how often immigration rules are being rewritten at the moment that the visa route has already changed again since then, and last week’s white paper will herald yet more revisions.

A hearing was held earlier this month with senior civil servants. Committee member Chris Kane (Labour, Stirling and Strathallan) asked about the effect on higher education of raising the salary thresholds for eligibility, speaking of the “frustrated researchers and professors” who have been writing to him. The usual bland promises about the Home Office talking regularly to the Department for Education got aired.

That was about it for the hearing – though (to go off on a tangent for a moment) it was notable that, when asked about sponsors’ use of recruitment agents, Home Office director Marc Owen’s mind immediately went to universities and the issuing of student, rather than skilled worker, visas:

For example, in a university context, if a university wants to use a recruitment agency in Pakistan or Bangladesh in order to source international students for it, and those are not genuine students, and they come here, but do not turn up and do not enrol, or they claim asylum or whatever, that is on the university. The university is at risk, therefore, of losing its licence or of suspension action. It is for the university, in that context, to ensure that it is using only proper agents overseas, which is why we have worked with the British Council on the agent quality framework to ensure that sponsors are doing the right thing. We cannot really regulate what will be happening in terms of agents in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria and so on.

Anyway, while the hearing may not have had much direct commentary on the issues facing the higher education sector, UCEA and UUK have submitted evidence to the inquiry which is well worth a read. It sets out how increases to skilled worker salary thresholds, allied with higher visa fees and a skyrocketing Immigration Health Surcharge, are “negatively impacting the ability of HEIs to attract and afford the best academics, researchers and professional services staff in the world.”

Depressingly – given that shortly after the evidence was submitted the white paper proposed a whole host of new changes – it concludes:

This is a serious issue. Any further increases to the salary threshold, ‘going rates’, discounted salary rates or other changes to the SW or other visa routes could have the potential to bring academic and research positions (in greater numbers) into scope which would be extremely detrimental.

The evidence is based on survey responses via UCEA’s immigration HR network, which by the looks of it attracted responses from around 90 institutions. Specific concerns around immigration costs included the impact on those international staff applying with a family (on the hook for more than £10,000 in some cases), and the effect on new staff specifically earlier in their careers. It speaks of “candidate losses” during the visa process, where applicants have pulled out on seeing quite how much it will cost them to migrate to the UK.

The survey also sought to judge to what extent there has been a slowdown in international recruitment since the March 2024 changes came in. It’s admittedly hard to disentangle the decline in skilled worker visa sponsorship with the general recruitment slowdown seen all across the sector in recent years – but 73 institutions said that the higher salary threshold was a cause of difficulty in recruiting international staff, and 54 said that increased immigration costs were. Visa processing times and a lack of suitably qualified applicants also got mentions.

More concretely, respondents were asked whether they felt that changes to the salary thresholds could explain difficulties in recruitment, to any degree. The majority said yes – the table below shows the breakdown in yeses for different categories of staff (all these questions were answered by between 86 and 89 institutions):

It’s perhaps unsurprising – given salary levels – that professional services staff look to be most affected, but also notable the extent to which academics and researchers are being impacted.

The UCEA/UUK submission also notes that, even earlier this year, there have been technical changes to skilled worker rules that have affected universities. Under the latest regulations, the salary threshold needs to take into account any salary deductions that an employee is subject to – in particular, if they are paying back loans related to immigration costs (truly voluntary benefits, such as a salary sacrifice, would not be counted). This is to deter sponsors from passing on immigration costs to workers.

It’s noted that many higher education institutions offer interest-free loans to incoming staff to cover the (scandalous) upfront charges they face – though UUK has previously said that a number of universities are being obliged to reconsider this due to financial pressures. The submission to the committee also highlights the administrative burden the new rules look to have engendered:

The additional work involved for organisations in reporting and administering salary deductions for the Home Office in implementing and monitoring this new rule regarding immigration loans seems disproportionate.

The apparent alternative would be to offer higher salaries to ensure that, even with deductions, these do not fall foul of the raised threshold. This of course creates a state of affairs where more of universities’ budgets are essentially covering Home Office immigration fees – it’s of a piece with the government’s obfuscations on the IHS as an allowable deduction from research grants.

I say “apparent alternative”, as sadly the more likely alternative – as the survey shows – will be higher education institutions recruiting fewer international staff, something the sector, students, and UK research will all suffer for.