Although Labour highlighted the life sciences sector as being crucial to the UK economy in its pre-election manifesto, it appears they will not offer significant support to life sciences businesses via the UK’s immigration system.
As a highly specialised and technical sector, life sciences businesses often face difficulty sourcing the talent required to fill key roles. An OBN survey published in February 2024 found that 90% of life sciences employers suffered skills shortages in the last year and that “attracting and retaining qualified talent remains a significant challenge.”
For employers navigating these recruitment issues, ensuring the attraction and retention of international talent is often a priority. It is therefore crucial to stay up to date on the current UK immigration landscape, and to consider what future changes we might expect from the new government in this area.
What are Labour’s immigration proposals?
Labour’s overarching aim remains the same as the previous Conservative government – to reduce net migration. There had been hope in some quarters that Labour would reverse, or at least revisit, some of the changes ushered in by the Conservatives in April 2024 regarding immigration.
Instead, Labour have committed to continuing these policies, which include:
- Retaining the increased salary thresholds for sponsorship visas, meaning that the minimum salary thresholds to be paid by employers are generally much higher than before April 2024. For example, an employer sponsoring an individual as a biological scientist prior to 4 April 2024 would generally have needed to pay a guaranteed annual salary of at least £30,600. For the same role from 4 April 2024, the minimum salary rate is usually £38,000 per year.
- Limits on bringing dependents to the UK for most overseas students and workers in the care sector.
- Retaining the vast reduction of roles listed as a shortage occupation (now called the Immigration Salary list) and removing the “going rate” salary threshold discount that used to apply to these roles.
- Retaining the new minimum income threshold for partner visas (currently £29,000 per year). Labour has, however, paused the planned increases to the threshold (to £34,500 in Autumn 2024 and to £38,700 in Spring 2025) and has asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review these thresholds.
The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, made a statement to Parliament in July 2024 arguing that the high volume of work visas issued in recent years marks “a failure over many years to tackle skills shortages and other problems in the UK labour market, meaning too many sectors have remained reliant on international recruitment”.
The Labour government has confirmed its intention to tackle the root causes of what it sees as an overreliance on overseas workers in particular sectors, including health and social care. This includes:
- Improving access to training and apprenticeships to build the domestic workforce – including via the establishment of a new body, Skills England, which will bring together businesses, training providers and government to ensure that the skills policy is aligned with the UK’s economic needs. The government has stated that Skills England is intended to support local areas “to develop the skilled workforces they need – in particular across construction and healthcare”.
- Targeting sectors which rely heavily on overseas talent, which could include workforce training and development plans for these sectors to address “their failure to invest in skills here in the UK”.
- More robust penalties for employers that breach employment laws, including restricting these employers from hiring workers from abroad.
We await the substantive details of how these proposals will work in practice. In the meantime, the direction of travel is clearly moving towards increased restrictions on employers relying on overseas talent, alongside additional schemes and investment to support the UK labour market.
As the life sciences sector continues to struggle with recruitment issues that aren’t possible to solve with the UK workforce alone, it remains to be seen whether Labour’s proposals will be sufficient (and timely enough) to effectively solve the ongoing problems.
Contact us
Our multi-disciplinary life sciences team has extensive experience advising on immigration issues. If you have any questions on this topic, or if you would like to discuss how these developments may affect your business, please contact one of our team who will be happy to help.
Jackie Penlington