A £30,000 salary threshold would be detrimental for research and innovation. We need an immigration system that welcomes skilled people from overseas.
Today, the UK National Academies unite to oppose the suggested £30,000 salary threshold. The Academy of Medical Sciences, together with the Royal Society, the British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering stand together to uphold that a £30,000 salary threshold would be detrimental for research and innovation.
Many important roles within the research and innovation workforce have salaries below £30,000. 42% of technicians in UK universities were earning less than £30,000 a year in 2017. People who would be affected by this threshold include specialist research technicians who operate equipment and maintain ongoing experiments, language specialists who provide expert teaching, researchers at the start of their careers, and part-time staff whose take-home salary is lower than a full-time equivalent.
Today's new explainer document (also available to view and download from the side of this page) tackles questions such as: can salaries simply be increased, why does UK research and innovation need more people, and will foreign nationals still want to work in specialist support roles in the UK?
Read the full document, or read more about our ongoing work to support UK research.
£30,000 salary threshold explainer document - UK National Academies