Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 13
13
Deferred
Paragraph: 59
Fund research into machine learning for automating general practice clinical administration.
Recommendation
The Government should also fund research into the specific role that machine learning can play in the automation of reporting and coding test results to reduce clinical admin in general practice.
Government Response Summary
The government's response outlines changes to pension arrangements, including increasing the annual allowance, abolishing the lifetime allowance, and introducing retirement flexibilities, which is entirely unrelated to the recommendation about funding machine learning research for admin reduction.
Paragraph Reference:
59
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
Partially accept. The Department partially accepts this recommendation. We recognise that pension arrangements can sometimes drive GPs to reduce their hours or leave the profession altogether. In the 2023 Spring Budget, we announced a 50% increase in the annual allowance from £40,000 to £60,000 and abolished the lifetime allowance entirely so pension tax charges do not act as a driver for early retirements, which expect will encourage GPs to continue to work. In addition, the Department has changed NHS pension scheme rules to prevent staff receiving unintentionally higher annual allowance tax charges driven by the current high inflation environment. Taken as a whole, these tax measures will encourage experienced GPs to remain in practice. As promised in Our Plan for Patients, we are implementing new retirement flexibilities to help retain experienced staff, including GPs, whilst making it easier and attractive for retired staff to return. We abolished from 1 April 2023 the pension rule that staff could only work up to 16 hours a week in the first month after returning from retirement without affecting their pension. We removed from 1 April 2023 the rule that prevented retired staff who return to NHS work from re-joining the scheme and building up more pension. We intend making a new ‘partial retirement’ option available to staff from October 2023 as an alternative to full retirement. Staff will be able to draw down some or all their pension whilst continuing to work and build up further pension. Our Plan for Patients set out that we will work with NHS England to ensure that NHS employers are able to offer local solutions to pension tax issues such as employer pension contribution recycling. This is already within the gift of employers in general practice. However, the changes announced at Budget mean far fewer staff will now experience pension tax issues and so the need for local solutions reduces. Continuity of Care