The young high-earners deserting Britain – and never coming back

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The young high-earners deserting Britain – and never coming back​

It's easy to see why people are fleeing high-tax Britain for a better life abroad

ByCharlotte Gifford14 June 2023

Helen Laing, 40, had an executive level job in the hotel business when she decided she had had enough of Britain.

Ms Laing – who at the time was renting a two-bedroom cottage in the South West – said despite earning a decent salary, she could not see a world in which she would ever be able to afford a decent home in a location she wanted.

She said: “I was working 70 hours a week just for the prospect of one day buying a small box. I wasn’t sure what it was all for any more.”

Helen Laing is one of many who have been driven to emigrate by high taxes, low wages and soaring property prices CREDIT: Helen Laing

Helen is not alone. More than 557,000 people emigrated from the UK in 2022, and official figures show that the number of adults leaving the UK has steadily risen over the past decade.

The wealthy, too, are setting sail. The UK is expected to lose over 3,000 high-net-worth individuals this year – double that of last year – according to the consultancy Henley and Partners.

Thousands of doctors and teachers are also fleeing the country in search of a better quality of life abroad.

It was nearly two years ago when Helen made the decision to give up her rental property. Now, she travels around the world, working as a hotel consultant and business owner.

But she said her decision was not only down to soaring property prices, adding: “There’s a sense of gloom in the country that you just don’t see in other places around the world.”

Ms Laing is now happy to call herself a “digital nomad” – a name given to describe the tech workers and writers who have taken advantage of the remote-working era to travel all over the world and work with a degree of autonomy in glamorous destinations.

High-tax, low-wage Britain​

The rise of remote working has been a key drivers in pushing young professionals to consider a life outside of the UK – but for many, soaring inflation has been the final straw.

The cost of living crisis is being felt more intensely in the UK, where food price inflation stands at a 40-year-high, said Hailey Low, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

Energy prices continue to soar despite wholesale energy prices falling. As a net importer, the UK is disproportionately hard hit by higher energy costs, compared to a country like the US which produces most of its own gas.

“Against the backdrop of record-high inflation, higher as compared to other G7 countries and European regions, the cost of living crisis is biting the UK hard,” Ms Low said.

This is causing a real income squeeze. The latest data shows that regular pay excluding bonuses increased by 7.2pc in the three months to April. Yet despite wage growth rising at its fastest in 20 years, households are being forced to spend more of their income on energy, food and soaring rental and mortgage costs. As a result, families are facing the biggest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s tax raids are also piling even more pressure onto household budgets. The tax burden is soaring to its highest level since the Second World War. Higher rates of income tax are no longer a tax reserved for the minority.

Today, 11pc of adults pay 40pc income tax, up from 3.5pc in 1991-2. The Government’s decision to freeze tax thresholds will push the proportion up to 14pc.

The five-year freeze, which lasts until 2027-28, will wipe out about a third of the growth in households’ real disposable income that households otherwise would have seen.

There are fears the income squeeze could only get worse if Labour come to power. The rich are said to be putting together “contingency plans” to protect their wealth in case Labour wins the next general election.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has promised to introduce new tax policies, including an abolition of the “non-dom” status for wealthy residents earning an income overseas, should the party come to power, but experts warn the policies could drive out the UK’s wealthiest.

It is not hard to see why Brits may be tempted to look elsewhere, particularly when salaries can be that much higher overseas.

London law firms struggle to compete for the top talent with their counterparts in the US, where lawyers can get £50,000 more for a role. Meanwhile, overworked, underpaid doctors are sitting ducks for foreign recruitment agencies, who are luring them away to sunny destinations like Australia with the promise of higher pay, more holiday and a better quality of life.

‘I couldn’t believe how differently I was treated in Oz’​

Last year 6,950 UK doctors applied for a certificate to work abroad, up from 5,576 in 2021, according to the General Medical Council (GMC).

A survey by the GMC found more than half of doctors who have left the UK are still working overseas, with one in six going to Australia. Among them is Michael Mrozinski, 37, who left the UK in 2016 to work as a GP in Melbourne.

Mr Mrozinski occasionally still picks up shifts in the emergency department when he visits friends and family in Glasgow, but he is enjoying it “less and less” because the team is so visibly short-staffed and overworked.

“The junior doctors are broken – even the senior doctors are leaving.”

A better work-life balance is the main attraction of Australia, Mr Mrozinski said. The healthcare service is not experiencing the same staff shortages as the UK, he added, which frees doctors up to take holiday and recharge.

Michael Mrozinski left the UK in 2016 to work as a GP in Melbourne CREDIT: Michael Mrozinski

“Australia is playing the long game,” said Mr Mrozinski. “They know that well-rested doctors make better decisions. They also stay in the profession. Junior doctors in the UK are told to wait it out because once they become a consultant, everything will get better. But once they get there, they’re completely burnt out.”

Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said they consistently hear reports of GPs choosing to work overseas, in countries such as Australia, New Zealand or Canada – which have similar primary care systems to the UK’s – in search of better working conditions.

“This is, of course, concerning and is just one aspect of the wider retention problem we are seeing in NHS general practice,” she said.

“We actually have more GPs in training than ever before, which is hugely encouraging, but numbers entering the workforce are outnumbered by fully qualified, full-time-equivalent GPs leaving it.

“We cannot continue this trajectory – our own College surveys indicate that a further 22,000 GPs are considering leaving the profession in the next five years, many citing stress and burnout as the reason.”
Australia is set to see its biggest immigration surge on record, with net migration expected to surge to 400,000 in 2022-23.

The country’s recruiters are not subtle in their attempts to lure away disillusioned medics. Job advertisements targeting UK doctors promise “a warmer climate”, “better work-life balance” and A$240,000 (£127,600) salaries.

When Mr Mrozinski graduated in 2009, he was getting paid the same salary as junior doctors starting out today. The British Medical Association Junior Doctors Committee has called for a 35pc rise in wages to reflect the pay erosion of the past decade.

“GPs and their hard-working teams are delivering millions more appointments than before the pandemic, with almost half offered on the day of booking – but with 898 fewer fully qualified, full-time equivalent GPs than we did in 2019.

“In some areas, GPs are now responsible for more than 2,500 patients,” said Ms Hawthorne.

“This isn’t sustainable and without urgent action, the future of NHS general practice and the care GP teams provide to more than a million patients every day is in peril.

“The bottom line is, we need thousands more GPs – and the numbers are going in the wrong direction.”

‘There’s no income tax here’​

While some workers are enticed overseas by better working conditions and higher pay, others are being driven out of the UK by huge tax rises.

Another country luring the British offshores is the United Arab Emirates. The number of British expats arriving in the UAE has doubled in the past fifteen years to around 250,000, said Bob Parker of Holborn Assets, a financial advice firm.

Mr Parker said that the rise of remote working during the pandemic has accelerated this. “If you are a sole trader who now works from home, the cost of setting up your own company which provides a full residence Visa and the ability to open a local bank account, starts at a couple of thousand pounds,” he said.

“You can now run your life from an apartment in Ras Al Khaimah, Dubai or any of the Emirates and stop paying income tax.”

Tim Searle, of wealth manager Globaleye, said the demographic of British expats in Dubai, the UAE’s most populous city, had changed dramatically in recent years. He said: “In the old days, becoming an expat Dubai was the crème de la crème of the professional world. Now it’s even bar staff coming over.”

Low taxation and a low crime rate are high up on the priority lists of those drawn to the glitzy Middle Eastern metropolis. Mr Searle – himself a British domicile who has lived in the UAE for over thirty years – said many of his clients left Britain because they were “fed-up of getting hit by 40pc income tax.”

There is no income tax in Dubai. Instead, Dubai residents pay excise tax on items the government considers harmful to human health and the environment and value added tax on goods and services. Expats also have to pay to use Dubai’s healthcare system. Living there is not cheap, “but everything you earn goes straight into your own pocket,” Mr Searle said.

Dubai is also regarded by expats as a safer place than London. “I can leave my car parked outside and no one will touch it. My wife can go out in her finery and not worry about a thing,” said Mr Searle.

Ms Hawthorne said it was impossible to know exactly how many doctors were leaving the UK for good. She said: “Some emigrate permanently, others leave temporarily and come back at a later date.”

But Mr Mrozinski said unless pay and working conditions improve, the UK will continue to lose doctors to countries like Australia. He said: “From what I’m seeing, new junior doctors don’t think working in the NHS is a good career for them.”

Ms Laing, too, said her mind is made up. “I have no intention at all of ever settling down in the UK.”

The young high-earners deserting Britain – and never coming back

It's easy to see why people are fleeing high-tax Britain for a better life abroad

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