Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 19
19
Deferred
Adopt recommendations on NHS pensions, accounting for GP partners and supporting practices.
Recommendation
The Government and NHS England should adopt the recommendations related to NHS pensions in our recent Report on Workforce: recruitment, training and retention in health and social care. In developing short and long-term solutions to the NHS pensions issue the Government and NHS England must specifically account for the status of GP partners as employers, for example by providing specific guidance and support for GP practices to help them adopt pension recycling and retire and return approaches. We welcome the focus on this issue in the Government’s Plan for Patients but the Government must provide further detail on what changes it will introduce. (Paragraph 65) Continuity of care
Government response summary AI-generated
The government rejects the recommendation by referring to its response to recommendation 17 (which concerned continuity of care models) and reiterates plans to promote the RCGP’s Continuity of Care toolkit, thereby failing to address the substance of NHS pensions for GP partners.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
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
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