2025 16 MAY
The UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer is considering introducing a special visa route. This new visa route will be designed to attract foreigners to invest significant sums in the UK. This special visa was being planned to counter the economic blow due to recent tax hikes and the government curbing the work permits. As per the Bloomberg report, ministers are considering proposals for an investor visa open to people willing to fund sectors seen as strategically important by Starmer’s administration, such as artificial intelligence, clean energy, and life sciences, according to people familiar with the matter.
People spoke on the condition of anonymity that the visa plans are at an early stage and subject to change. Alongside this, effort is also being made to make existing visa routes easier for investors. The preparatory work on a new investor visa is in place, and it comes against the backdrop of Starmer’s priority of boosting the British economy and a backlash over efforts to roll back “non-dom” tax breaks for wealthy foreigners living in the UK.
Many of the richest residents of the country are leaving the country after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, implemented tougher tax rules in April. The Starmer government has seen it and is hence trying to fix this problem. Starmer’s administration’s decision to hike the national insurance payroll tax at Reeves’ first budget last October hit the economy badly. Hence, it was also trying to make up for this, as the move of hiking the national insurance payroll tax has caused a downturn in hiring and hit business confidence, and a broader clampdown on visas was announced this week as well.
Starmer, in the ‘white paper’ released this week, pledged to bring down immigration and “attract the best talent, entrepreneurship, and investment into our country.” It also pledged “faster routes for bringing people to the UK who have the right skills and experience to supercharge UK growth in strategic industries.”
A government official said that the Home Office, Trade Department, Treasury, and Business have all agreed on the current need to lure the best and brightest to the UK in the pursuit of boosting the country’s economic growth. However, the Home Office declined to comment on this. The treasury also did not respond immediately when requested to make a comment on it.
Donald Trump, the US president, meanwhile, has sought to attract foreign investors stateside. He has offered a program that creates a pathway for investors to US residency and citizenship that pay US$5 million to the US Treasury.
The UK previously had a “Tier 1” investor visa that offered a path to residence to wealthy foreigners who invested at least £2 million (US$2.7 million) in local companies. However, the former Conservative government scrapped the visa in 2022 as part of a crackdown on illicit finance and fraud, at a time when Britain was concerned about the influence of Russian money in the UK.
According to people familiar, Starmer’s government was keen to avoid the drawbacks of the previous investor visa. The visa was criticized at the time for being abused to funnel dirty money into Britain, and hence there were considerations to put restrictions such as requiring investment to occur in specific strategic sectors and excluding assets like property.
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