Response by the Research Councils UK To MAC Consultation on the Review of the Shortage Occupation Lists for the UK and Scotland and Creative Occupations. Background Research Councils UK (RCUK) is the strategic partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils. RCUK invests annually around 3 billion in research funded from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS). This public investment in science and research covers the complete range of academic disciplines from arts and humanities, astronomy, physics, chemistry and engineering to medical and biological sciences, social sciences, economics and environmental sciences. Despite enormous pressure on public spending, funding for science and research programmes has been protected, demonstrating the Government s commitment to rebalancing the economy and promoting economic growth. The UK has an excellent track record in science and research. Despite growing international competition, the UK research base is second in the world for excellence and the UK is the most productive country for research in the G8. The UK remains first or second in the world of research in most disciplines overall. This world class standing is a key driver for economic growth; contributing to the economic competitiveness of the UK is a prominent part of the Research Councils individual strategies by improving the performance of existing businesses, delivering highly skilled people to the labour market, improving public services and policy making and by attracting Research and Development investment from global business. It is essential that the Government s immigration policy enable the Research Councils with the ability to attract and retain the best international talent, via a flexible approach. This is the only way we are able to ensure they are appropriately resourced in order to sustain scientific research at a world class standard, and create long term economic benefits. RCUK s vision for Research Careers and Diversity 1 is based on the standing that investment in attracting, training and managing the next generation of world-class researchers makes a major contribution to the impact of research and benefits the economic and social wellbeing in the UK. This is to be delivered through: 1 http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/researchcareers/pages/home.aspx 1
ensuring that the best potential researchers from a diverse population are attracted into research careers; enhancing the quality of research training and the employability of early stage researchers; enhancing the impact of UK researchers by promoting improved career development and management of research staff by research organisations. This vision can only be achieved if international talent can be attracted and retained within the UK, and developed through a long term commitment to research programmes. Scientific research by its nature is long term and constantly evolves due to new scientific discoveries across the world; the investment made by the Government in international world leading science, to the sum of billions of pounds annually, ensures that UK scientific research stays at the forefront of international science. Remaining at the forefront of scientific research is crucial in ensuring inward investment into the UK; this is highlighted by the recent announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to commit to new spending on scientific infrastructure 2. This investment allows research in a wide range of fields including physics, chemistry, medical sciences, biology and engineering. However, as highlighted in the Research Councils UK Strategic Framework for Capital Investment 3, which highlights the capital infrastructure needed to deliver the future scientific research capability, infrastructure alone can not address the enormity of the challenge: a flexible highly-skilled workforce with state of the art technical skills and research leadership is required across all career stages to enhance the excellence of the research base and deliver benefit for the UK economy. Investment in skills, capacity and capability are all crucial to the sustainability of research excellence and contribute to making the UK an attractive place to invest and grow business. The UK scientific community requires the flexibility to be able to attract, recruit and retain the best talent from across the world in order to deliver on its scientific programmes. The investment by the Government in scientific research demonstrates the value such research brings to the UK economy, through the attraction of inward investment, creation of new roles, knowledge transfer to young talent and the development of new spin out organisations. The success of the RCUK is crucially based on the skills of its staff and it is therefore essential that we can attract and retain the best. 2 Rt Hon George Osborne MP address to Royal Society, 9 November 2012, http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/speech_chx_091112.htm 3 http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/publications/policy/pages/capitalinvestment.aspx 2
Therefore, it is essential that we are able to bring migrant workers, who have these specific skills, into the UK in order to develop and grow this talent in resident workers. In addition, bringing in a migrant worker to exchange such knowledge and skills enable RCUK to continue its work and create further employment opportunities for resident workers. The use of the shortage occupation lists not only enables the research councils to engage with the best researchers, but it also highlights to the wider scientific community the importance the UK places on the skills and experience these researchers have. Shortage Occupation Lists RCUK has concerns for roles not only currently on the shortage occupation lists, but also for roles involved in research techniques that are considered essential for future research, such as within the Informatics specialism. The following justification is split into two parts, covering the current use of the shortage occupation lists and providing a case for the inclusion of Informatics roles on said lists. In all respects the salary allocation for each occupation is consistent with the relevant council s pay scales. Inclusion onto the shortage occupation lists - Informatics Informatics is the discipline which combines scientific, computer science and statistical knowledge. It manages, integrates, manipulates and analyses large data sets which result from research areas such as clinical trials, genomics data and various scientific imaging data sources. Informatics is a developing field and there are various job titles used; informatician, computational scientist (including biologist, chemist, physicist etc), sequencing data analyst, computer biologist, bio-statistician, scientific database curator, informatics engineer and lab information management system programmer. Based on the wide ranging research impact of a bio-informaticians role, we believe that the most appropriate code of practice for the role is 2119 of the Office for National Statistics SOC 2010, with associated minimum salary levels for entry and experienced candidates linked to the standard salary within the occupation code. Informatics within the various disciplines has become an integral part of almost all research. The complexity of systems models and the use of large data sets in systems are key drivers of the integration of informatics, quantitative, statistical and computational approaches into scientific research. This is of strategic importance to scientific research, as highlighted in the Department of Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) Strategy for UK Life Sciences 4, and has high demands on the supporting infrastructure, as well as on the skill requirements of the researchers and support staff required to undertake the data analysis, assessment and ongoing research. These issues are not reserved to the UK and impact on a global basis, with numerous initiatives and strategies being implemented throughout the world; a recent European Commission report 5 highlights the skills and resources required to support the development of these complex systems and makes a number of 4 http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/s/11-1429-strategy-for-uk-life-sciences.pdf 5 http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/e-infrastructure/docs/report_human_skills.pdf 3
recommendations for further studies and ongoing funding which will impact all EU members. The Head of Mathematical Biology Group, Centre for Integrative Biology at The Pirbright Institute has stated that "Computational tools are indispensable for managing and analysing high throughput data, and bioinformatics has therefore become an integral part of bioscience research. Furthermore, the complexity of biological systems necessitates correspondingly complex models. Working with these requires rigorous formal and theoretical foundations, especially where quantitative understanding and predictions are desired (e.g. in epidemiology) or where processes involving multiple levels of biological organisations are investigated and modelled (e.g. host-virus interactions)." Despite the increased importance of such research, RCUK has had continued difficulty in recruiting resident workers with the appropriate high level of skills required to meet the research demand. Recruitment Issues Based on a sample element of recruitment campaigns held over the preceding 12 months from 3 Institutes or Units of the Natural Environment Research Council, Science & Technology Facilities Council and Medical Research Council, 41 recruitment campaigns have been held for various informatic roles; of these campaigns there were 10 unsuccessful campaigns, 7 migrant workers were recruited, and of the remainder there was an even split of UK and EEA nationals recruited into the roles. Overall a third of applicants were migrant workers. Training and Initiatives There are few conventional university programmes that teach informatics, although a number of master courses are available. Recruits tend to come from a science background with a strong interest in computer programming and mathematics; others come from a more computational background with a strong interest in science. They are typically educated to PhD level, although those performing service functions can be of degree or post-grad calibre. It is part of the RCUK vision to produce highly skilled researchers, both within the UK and internationally, through research training, in order to advance and improve crucial scientific areas. As such, RCUK is committed to training and up-skilling resident workers, provided that they have the necessary pre-requisite skills. However, often the knowledge and skills required do not exist, or at least are not widely available, within the UK. The global scientific community is constantly creating and developing new techniques which RCUK, and the UK, also need to adopt to remain competitive and successful; this can only be done through collaborations and attracting international scientists to the UK. There are a number of initiatives that have been set up across the various research councils to develop the skills and technology required to support the growing field of informatics; this includes developing infrastructure and future strategy, a few examples of which are shown below: 4
BBSRC BBSRC has undertaken to expand the training provision in systems biology skills as a key priority, as set out in the Strategic Plan 2010-2015 through the funding support of research projects. By funding the development of this training BBSRC hopes to develop mathematical skills across the BBSRC and broader bioscience community in the UK and internationally. World-class bioscience is critically dependent on new technologies, methodologies and resources. This priority aims to encourage research that will yield the next-generation of these 'new ways of working'. Projects should focus on underpinning and enabling one of the BBSRC strategic research priorities (food security, industrial biotechnology, bioscience underpinning health) or have potential, generic utility across one or more broad areas of the biosciences. The focus on data driven biology aims to encourage the development of tools and approaches that are required to underpin and enable modern biological research as it continues to evolve as a data intensive discipline. The area includes the development of bioinformatics software tools and the adoption of novel computational approaches. NERC NERC have implemented a 5 year programme for Mathematics & Informatics for Environmental Omic Data Synthesis 6 ; the programme will develop the fundamental knowledge needed to integrate large volumes of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data into wider environmental analyses to address new research questions. The programme aims to promote development of omic informatics as a professional niche within environmental research via disciplinehopping to/from mathematical and computational sciences and through wider community engagement and knowledge transfer from other research communities including biomedical, biological and physical sciences. MRC - The Medical Research Council is currently overseeing a number of high profile scientific development programmes; these include the Clinical Sciences Centre at the Hammersmith Hospital, London, the National Institute for Medical Research/Francis Crick Institute in London, and the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire. In particular, they expect to see greater demand for bio-informaticians and bio-statisticians, amongst other specialists; we anticipate that these highly specialised skill sets will need to be filled largely by non-eea migrants in order to meet the increasing demands of being able to interpret scientific data (be that for genetics, imaging, population health studies or other areas of science). Failure to be able to recruit individuals with these skill sets will potentially result in a failure to capitalise on new techniques to capture and store data, and restrict the key process of seeing basic science translated to therapies. The MRC has implemented a series of training programmes to further develop the informatics skills of its researchers: the CGAT training and analysis programme with the 5 year strategic training award; Special training fellowship in biomedical informatics (computational biology, neuroinformatics and health informatics); 6 http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/omics/background.asp 5
MRC Career development award in biostatistics. STFC Scientific facilities such as synchrotrons, satellites, telescopes and lasers, collectively generate many terabytes of data every day. Their users require efficient access to geographically distributed leading edge data storage, computational and network resources in order to manage and analyse these data in a timely and cost effective way. e-science builds the infrastructure which delivers this. e-science is vital to the successful exploitation of powerful next generation scientific facilities, operated by Science and Technology Facilities Council on behalf of the UK research community. STFC s mission is to spearhead the exploitation of e-science technologies throughout a number of programmes, the research communities they support and the national science and engineering base. STFC s Computational Science and Engineering Department supports major science themes and capabilities, ranging from processes occurring inside atoms to environmental modelling; this support is provided through the use of high-performance computing, numerical analysis and software engineering, all of which are essential to the success of informatics. Ongoing use of the shortage occupation lists Under the current shortage occupation lists the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) utilise various geo scientific roles under Code of Practice 2113. To help develop the required skills, since 2009 they have run recruitment exercises for a postdoctoral training programme to up skill the UK science base; this is particularly important for their research programme that supports the needs of the oil industry. This programme however does not meet all of the demand they have for these skills and it is therefore crucial that NERC are able to both attract and retain highly skilled migrant workers in order to deliver on key research objectives. The work NERC undertake through the British Geological Survey (BGS) relies heavily on the geo scientific roles within the shortage occupation lists. Over the preceding 12 months the BGS has undertaken 17 recruitment campaigns, 7 of which are still ongoing, for geologists, hydro geologists and geochemists of varying seniority levels; despite the ability to attract migrant workers into these roles, which has led to approximately 20% of the candidates being migrant workers, of the 10 closed campaigns 2 were still unsuccessful. Furthermore, within the House of Lords 2 nd Report of Session 2012-2013 Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects 7, concern is highlighted over the geophysicist role during discussion of strategically important and vulnerable subjects within Higher Education; due to the length of time it takes to develop the skill requirements of researchers, this reiterates the importance of providing a means for securing access to migrant workers in order to address ongoing shortages where there are no suitable resident skilled workers. 7 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldsctech/37/3702.htm 6
The Impact of the Sunset Clause We strongly believe that rather than an arbitrarily chosen timeframe for automatic removal from the shortage occupation lists, a more flexible approach should be used. We believe that the evidence based detailed analysis the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) undertake to determine whether an occupation should be on the shortage occupation lists addresses whether there is still a need across the specified sector, identifies what skill development said sector is undertaking and provides a flexible responsive approach to immigration requirements across the UK. Additionally, the proposed period of 2 years before automatic withdrawal from the lists does not take into consideration the length of time that is required to train and develop appropriate resident talent. Our concerns are based on the timescale it takes for a researcher to achieve the relevant experience; this is approximately 8 years for an early stage researcher and upwards of 12 years (inclusive of research training) for more senior positions. The following diagram gives an overview of the academic process, with follow on research training commencing for early stage researchers under the Post doc position which in turn can lead to further research roles outside of academia, under the General Employment phase: Qualifications in Higher Education Figure from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Second Report 8 Any limitation to the retention of an occupation on the relevant lists should take into consideration the potential timescale it takes to up skill the resident labour market, 8 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldsctech/37/3702.htm 7
and based on the high specialism of the scientific based roles, we would argue that where an occupation is placed on the shortage list, the occupation should not be removed until the shortage has been addressed. We also support the need to undertake a regular review in order to ensure the shortage occupation lists remain responsive to ever changing developments in the scientific research sector, and that future needs are identified and supported; whilst we believe the relevant sector should be able to identify and respond to shortages, we would also recommend that full justifications are provided to ensure that identified shortages are addressed in an appropriate manner. In Conclusion: Given the priority in this area and capacity building alongside addressing the broader area of informatics both nationally and globally as set out within the RCUK response, we have gained input and support from the following individual representatives across academe, industry and the public sector: Input gratefully received from: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Medical Research Council Natural Environment Research Council Science & Technology Facilities Council The Pirbright Institute - Dr Simon Gubbins, IBM Andy Grant GlaxoSmithKline Darren Green Intel Sean McGuire, Digital-Science - Kaitlin Thaney. University College London Prof Peter Coveney Edinburgh University Prof Richard Kenway Southampton University Dr Oz Parchment Cambridge University Prof Mike Payne. Science and Technology Facilities Council Prof John Bancroft Met Office Dr Stuart Bell Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council - Prof Douglas Kell, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Dr Lesley Thompson. Prepared by: Gwyn Urwin - RCUK Immigration Advisor Lisa Hawkins - RCUK Immigration Advisor Stephen Longson - RCUK Immigration Manager 8