UK Chancellor John Healey will not include a new investor visa in his first Budget on October 28, according to a Financial Times (FT) report. The decision shelves a £5 million route drawn up under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, just five days after Bloomberg reported that Healey was weighing a residence path for wealthy foreigners.
Britain has had no dedicated investor route since the Tier 1 (Investor) visa closed to new applicants in February 2022. Its would-be successor got further than any proposal since, reaching private wealth advisers in May and a closed-door Cabinet Office session in June.
For practitioners who have lobbied for a replacement for more than four years, the reversal follows a familiar pattern. Serhan Aysever, Managing Partner at Beyond Global Partners, believes the government’s “repeated changes of direction on the investor visa send the wrong message to international investors,” at a time when the UK “should be looking to attract more foreign capital, entrepreneurial talent and long-term investment.”
What Healey Turned Down
Former Business Secretary Peter Kyle and Varun Chandra, Starmer’s business and investment adviser, drew up the plan. Investors would have committed at least £5 million to funds administered by the British Business Bank, the state-owned development bank, which would channel the money into British innovation and scale-up companies.
In return, they would have received residence rights, with settlement once the full £5 million had gone in over five years.
Government advisers pitched it at active investors in sectors such as artificial intelligence and life sciences rather than passive wealth, and earlier drafts excluded property and required an invitation to apply.
Why Healey Said No
Whitehall resistance predates Healey. At the June meeting, Treasury officials doubted the route would lift growth and the Home Office was unconvinced, with one insider insisting the plan “isn’t going anywhere.”
The plan then lost its government backers. When Andy Burnham replaced Starmer as prime minister on July 20, he made Healey chancellor and removed Kyle, the visa’s main champion, as business secretary the same day.
Healey’s Budget message points elsewhere. He has promised to devote it to “bloody-minded entrepreneurs” and ruled out a capital gains tax rise, reassuring the wealthy already in Britain while declining to court new ones.
Aysever argues the old routes deserve a fairer hearing. Despite their flaws, the Tier 1 Investor and Entrepreneur visas “attracted substantial international investment, encouraged business establishment, supported job creation,” in his view.
He accepts that the government “was right to address” weak source-of-wealth checks and due diligence, but argues those failures “should be viewed as lessons for designing a better program, rather than justification for abandoning investment migration altogether.”
Shelved, Not Scrapped
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Downing Street advisers remain interested in new ways to draw wealthy people to Britain, according to the FT report.
Any revival would have to fit around the Foreign Income and Gains (FIG) regime, which since April 2025 has exempted new arrivals from UK tax on foreign income and gains for four years.
The most detailed alternative comes from campaign group Foreign Investors for Britain (FIFB). Its proposed Global Investor Visa would require at least £2.5 million in qualifying UK investments within three months of receiving the visa, plus a flat £200,000 a year for up to 15 years in place of UK tax on foreign income and gains.
Holders’ foreign assets would also stay outside UK inheritance tax while they met the visa’s terms. Reform UK, meanwhile, has floated a £250,000 “Britannia Card.”
Aysever expects the debate to outlive the Budget. “I would be surprised if the discussion disappeared entirely,” he notes, since “the economic case for attracting international investment remains strong.”
Investors, however, “value predictability and consistency,” and he warns that “repeated policy reversals risk undermining confidence.”
His preferred design looks much like the one Healey passed over: capital channeled into “British businesses, innovation, infrastructure,” backed by transparent source-of-funds and source-of-wealth checks, security screening, and ongoing compliance monitoring.
Such safeguards, he says, “are entirely compatible with an attractive and internationally competitive program.”
Where That Leaves Investors
For now, Britain offers no capital-based route for residence. Founders can use the Innovator Founder visa, which requires endorsement from an approved body rather than a set investment, while others have fallen back on Skilled Worker sponsorship tied to a single role. Existing Tier 1 holders are unaffected and have until February 2028 to apply for settlement.
Competitors, meanwhile, are not standing still: Portugal, Greece, and several other European golden visas remain open, and “countries across Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere continue to develop attractive residency frameworks for international investors,” Aysever points out.
Ultimately, Aysever argues, the UK “should not confuse tighter immigration controls with closing the door to genuine investors and entrepreneurs.”
