Liz Truss vows to tackle Covid hospital backlog by stopping the migration of doctors from the NHS
The head of Tory leadership Liz Truss could change the pensions for doctors in a bid to advise them to leave the NHS.
Ms. Truss has promised to try to tackle the mammoth waiting lists caused by the backlog from the Covid pandemic.
To do this, she will partly focus on persuading soon-to-be-retired doctors to stay in the health care industry and try to get recently retired colleagues back.
The Telegraph reports the Prime Minister hopes to reform the way lifetime pension limits are applied to doctors and consultants.
This happens when one in ten GPs and consultants will leave in the next 18 months because they are penalized for going over the limit.
Liz Truss (pictured) is considering changing the tax rules around the lifetime pension cap to discourage doctors from leaving the NHS
One in ten consultants and GPs is expected to retire in the next 18 months due to pension regulations (stock image)
Last month, the House of Commons health and social care committee said the NHS pension scheme should be changed to prevent staff from feeling like they should leave.
Under NHS rules senior staff must pay 14.5% of their salary into their pension – in the draft plan GPs can choose not to participate in their pension entirely.
According to the article, Ms Truss will be thinking about eliminating the tax doctors now have to pay once they have reached the life limit of £1,073,100 or their annual allowance.
It is thought she could also tweak rules that impact retired doctors returning to the NHS.
Currently, returning doctors are not allowed to earn more from their combined salaries and pensions than if they were just working full time.
One doctor said the move of ‘senior, highly experienced’ doctors away from the NHS could be prevented by making changes to the pension scheme.
Dr Brian Guttridge, chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) retired members’ committee, said: ‘We have long called for an end to punitive pension taxation regulations. That means too many people simply don’t pay to stay. Setting this permission would be an important step forward. ‘
The move will be seen as part of a plan to tackle strained waiting lists in the NHS, as staff look to tackle backlogs caused by the Covid pandemic.
The NHS waiting list has grown to a record 6.6 million with more than 330,000 people waiting more than a year for treatment.
The crisis has seen an increase in the number of people self-funding their medical treatment, with 69,000 forced to pay privately in the final quarter of last year – an increase of more than a third.
Last week it was reported that the number of people on the heart waiting list had been growing every month for two years, with services still ‘extremely disrupted’.
According to NHS figures, almost half a million people have missed out on treatment or diagnostic tests for the heart since January 2020.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said people were dying ‘needlessly’ on waiting lists and warned many would die if the ‘heart crisis’ was continued.
