Re: Cuts to pension tax relief deepen retention crisis for senior doctors
As a doctor qualifying in 1992, after 6 years of medical school, I entered into a contract with my employers, the NHS. Like many others I worked 100+ hour weeks as a junior doctor. I worked 1 in 3 on-calls, lost count of the number of birthdays, weddings, and other events I missed. I moved jobs every 6 months to a different post in a different hospital. I gave up a great deal to practice medicine. The contract was that the NHS would look after you in the end, and the NHS pension was held up as an incentive to compensate for the exhausting, emotional, and challenging life as a doctor.
As Sir Steve Webb, former pensions minister said, pensions should be a long-term business, where people can plan with confidence for their retirement, knowing that the tax rules around pension saving will be stable. These changes to the pension, pernicious, complex, and not widely understood by the people that they affect, are nothing short of a betrayal.
Whether the pensions changes, forcing an exodus of the most senior and experienced doctors from the NHS, are a deliberate policy to reduce NHS spend, or simply following the law of unintended consequences to an ill-conceived policy, a solution needs to be urgently found. Thousands of senior doctors, myself included, must now ask ourselves whether we can afford to remain in the NHS pension scheme, or in NHS employment at all. The end of the NHS has been predicted for many years, but the banality of it coming this way is tragic.
Competing interests:
affected by these changes both as clinician and consumer
Rapid Response:
Re: Cuts to pension tax relief deepen retention crisis for senior doctors
As a doctor qualifying in 1992, after 6 years of medical school, I entered into a contract with my employers, the NHS. Like many others I worked 100+ hour weeks as a junior doctor. I worked 1 in 3 on-calls, lost count of the number of birthdays, weddings, and other events I missed. I moved jobs every 6 months to a different post in a different hospital. I gave up a great deal to practice medicine. The contract was that the NHS would look after you in the end, and the NHS pension was held up as an incentive to compensate for the exhausting, emotional, and challenging life as a doctor.
As Sir Steve Webb, former pensions minister said, pensions should be a long-term business, where people can plan with confidence for their retirement, knowing that the tax rules around pension saving will be stable. These changes to the pension, pernicious, complex, and not widely understood by the people that they affect, are nothing short of a betrayal.
Whether the pensions changes, forcing an exodus of the most senior and experienced doctors from the NHS, are a deliberate policy to reduce NHS spend, or simply following the law of unintended consequences to an ill-conceived policy, a solution needs to be urgently found. Thousands of senior doctors, myself included, must now ask ourselves whether we can afford to remain in the NHS pension scheme, or in NHS employment at all. The end of the NHS has been predicted for many years, but the banality of it coming this way is tragic.
Competing interests: affected by these changes both as clinician and consumer