Newly appointed Department of Science, Innovation and Technology minister Sir Patrick Vallance has committed to international collaboration to strengthen the UK’s global science and technology power.

In a speech to the G7 Science and Technology Ministerial, the new Labour MP said the UK is “open for business,” and committed the UK to increasing collaboration on AI and supercomputing.

He also called on data to be “open and accessible” and for resources to be pooled to “develop cutting-edge long-term research infrastructure and above all, stand in solidarity and support researchers who are under threat.”

After this, the minister controversally commented in a BBC Radio 4 interview that UK visa prices were “very high” and should be looked into to ensure the UK can attract and retain global talent in science and tech.

“We know there’s an impact of the difficulty of some of those schemes, so that means there is an opportunity there to try and make this easier again for people who do come in to do contributions to scientific knowledge creation and indeed to companies.” Vallance said.

“There are lots of different bits to the visa issue, including the cost which is very high at the moment for people coming to the UK that needs to be looked at and we need to think about how we can make the environment right for people to come who we want to have here contributing to science.”

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New requirements for the skilled worker visa came into effect this Spring, with the minimum wage requirements rising well above the national average. New visa applications must secure a job with a wage no less than £38,700, which is over £10k more than the previous threshold of £26,600.

However, the a spokesperson from the Home Office said that decreasing visa fees was “not government policy,” as reported by iNews.