Sir Paul Nurse, director and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute and former president of the Royal Society, has warned that the government’s proposed post-Brexit visa system is “not fit for purpose” and could make it extremely difficult to find technical research staff.

Nurse issued the warning at the launch of the institute’s new exhibition, Craft & Graft: Making Science Happen, which celebrates the invaluable but often unacknowledged contribution of technical staff in research.

“Engineers, technicians and other research specialists make up a significant part of our workforce and without them the science we do here would be impossible,” he said. “We have almost 600 technical staff here at the Crick. They are a backbone of our scientific research and more than a hundred come from Europe. To do the best science, we need the best people – at all levels.”

The 577 technical specialists make up approximately half of the scientific workforce at the Crick Institute – the largest biomedical research institute under a single roof in Europe – and carry out tasks which range from looking after 1.5 million fruit flies (a standard in vivo model in biomedical research) to fixing and inventing thousands of pieces of vital lab equipment every year. According to one Crick research scientist, a technician must train for at least a year simply to be allowed to work without supervision at the Institute.

Twenty-seven per cent of the Institute’s technical staff are from continental Europe, and were not required to meet visa requirements when they came to the UK to work.

The government has pledged that Brexit will put an end to the era of freedom of movement, with the result that citizens of EU27 countries will be processed via the same visa system as non-EU citizens. The government has proposed that a minimum salary of £30,000 will be required to grant a ‘skilled worker’ visa. This salary threshold would exclude many technicians, particularly those working outside London; Russell Group data indicates that approximately 27 per cent of skilled technicians at UK universities earn £25,000 or less.

“We benefit greatly from the talented technical staff and scientists from around the continent,” Nurse said. “They come here freely, they contribute hugely to the UK scientific endeavour and our economy, but unfortunately the government has made it clear that these continental Europeans in supporting us so strongly will end up being subject to the extremely difficult visa system, which is still not being properly overhauled. I have to work with it on a weekly basis; it is simply not fit for purpose.

“After Brexit we’re hoping we can continue to welcome technical staff from apprentices onwards, but we have to be aware that the conditions of the visas say that, for instance, we will have difficulty employing anyone who earns less than £30,000 a year. This is very damaging because we have to hire people for less than £30,000 a year, the government just doesn’t understand how this works and they have to sort it out,” he continued. “What isn’t good for science in the UK isn’t good for the rest of the UK.”

According to Bruna Coelho Almeida, a research scientist specialising in experimental histopathology, she would not have been able to come and work at the Institute if these rules had been applied to EU citizens previously: “I would never have been able to come to a city like this when I decided to move from my country,” she told E&T.

Nurse warned that the current visa systems required a complete overall in order to prevent “collapse” after Brexit, and that a future system that included continental Europeans must be simpler, faster, less expensive, and “must not lock out skilled technical staff based on arbitrary salary thresholds”.

Nurse has previously taken a strong public stance against a hard Brexit, stating that the scientific community felt “huge concern” and “depressed” about the government’s uncompromising approach to withdrawal from the EU; an October 2018 survey of Crick Institute staff found that 51 per cent of its scientific staff were less likely to stay in the UK following Brexit.

Crick Institute technicians told E&T that despite the political atmosphere, they feel well-supported by the Institute, which pays their settlement fees, keeps them on long-term and permanent contracts, and encourages open discussion around Brexit-related uncertainties: “They want to show that they’re behind you,” said Thomas Martinez, a research scientist working in cell services at the Crick, who moved to London from France four years ago. “It’s not just your problem, it’s our problem.”