Cancer research 'set back years' as visa fees drive scientists away from UK

With vital studies being shelved and foreign experts turning down jobs, leading charity urges ministers to act

- James Tapper

Research into curing and diagnosing cancers is being delayed for years because international researchers are rejecting job offers in the UK due to high visa costs.

Cancer Research UK told The Observer that several pieces of research had been affected by soaring immigration costs, which have risen by 126% since 2019 and are up to 17 times higher than the average of comparable countries including France, Australia, the US and South Korea.

Analysis of Cancer Research UK's annual spending on immigration costs shows that the amount the charity has paid the government in visa fees and other surcharges has nearly doubled since 2022-23, from £477,244 to £872,044 this year. The money would be enough to train 40 PhD students, according to Dr Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK.

The charity, one of the country's largest private research funders, was forced to mothball a study in Scotland examining how to encourage a patient's T-cells to attack colon cancer cells. The results could lead to new immunotherapy treatments to help some of the 44,100 people diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK.