The rise - which takes effect in October - will apply to more than 270 researchers employed by the Wellcome Trust.

The Association of University Teachers has said that it will be using the example of the increase when it opens pay negotiations later this week with one of the biggest employers in the sector, the Medical Research Council.

The rise affects researchers on Wellcome's career development scheme - those working in non-clinical areas, on contracts of at least three years.

They will get up to 30% - depending on how much they received in a previous salary review in 1989, when Wellcome felt the rewards for UK researchers were already too low in international terms.

'Generous' basic rates

A spokeswoman for the charity said many of them received a rise at the time of between 8% and 12% of its "already pretty generous" basic university salary - so they would now get another 22% to 18% extra to make up the 30%.

So someone now earning, say, �25,500 will get more than �33,000 from this autumn.

The charity says those whose research it funds through grants for specific projects already get enhanced salaries and are not affected by this announcement.

Wellcome, one of the UK's largest medical research charities, says the pay rise will cost it about �6m initially, then �2.5m a year.

Science 'no longer attractive'

It says it will bring the salaries paid to its senior researchers into line with other professions, helping it to attract and keep the brightest scientists in medical research.

Wellcome says UK science needs support

Wellcome's Director, Dr Michael Dexter, said there had been a serious erosion of salaries in real terms for UK researchers over the past decade.

"Science is no longer seen as an attractive career option for many of our best undergraduate and postgraduate students," he said, "and because of this, the UK is in grave danger of losing its position amongst the world leaders in scientific research by failing to recognise and reward its rich crop of top scientists.

"Urgent and immediate action is necessary to encourage the best graduates to remain in research and not be forced by financial considerations to move elsewhere."

Pay talks pre-empted

The announcement comes as the higher education sector is awaiting the government-commissioned Bett Report into university pay, now expected to be published on 23 June.

"It is now for government to respond to the Bett Report and implement increases that will secure the future of UK science. We are taking the lead both to enable the Trust to attract excellent scientists and to encourage the Government to match our award right across scientific research salaries," said Dr Dexter.

The Association of University Teachers, which has rejected a 3.5% pay offer for academic staff, regards the Wellcome move as highly significant.

The association's Deputy General Secretary, Paul Cottrell, says the union starts pay talks this Thursday with the Medical Research Council (MRC), which employs about 1,000 scientists.

"We don't know what they are going to offer but I would be surprised if it were even as high as the 3.5% the universities have offered this year. It will be interesting to see how they respond to this.

"They are in direct competition with Wellcome," he said, "so I think this is going to cause real problems. Because Wellcome have so much money to spend they could monopolise the market and cream off all the best people.

"Certainly we will be making use of this on Thursday and we'll be telling them to go back and tell the Treasury that perhaps they can't match Wellcome but they need to take it into account or the MRC is going to be severely disadvantaged."