NHS pensions: thousands of doctors have cut their working hours to avoid tax charges, survey finds

Thousands of GPs and consultants in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland have reduced their working hours or are planning to do so because of pension tax laws, a BMA survey has found.

Recent changes to pension regulations have led to many senior doctors receiving big tax bills, which increase if they work additional hours.1

A BMA survey of its members of all grades except junior doctors in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland received 6170 responses.

It found that 42% of GPs had reduced their working hours, as had 30% of hospital consultants, because of actual or potential pension tax charges. A further 34% of GPs were planning to reduce their hours in the future, as were a further 40% of consultants.

Responding to the findings, Rob Harwood, chair of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, said that to avoid large tax bills many consultants had given up, or wanted to give up, 10 hours a week. “Across the country, that represents several hundred thousand hours of patient time lost,” he said. “We are being put in an intolerable position because of these taxes, and our patients are suffering because of it.”

Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, said, “With patient lists growing and the numbers of GPs falling, swift and decisive action is needed from the government to end this shambolic situation and to limit the damage that a punitive pensions taxation system is inflicting on doctors, their patients, and across the NHS as a whole.”

Earlier this week the chair of BMA council, Chaand Nagpaul, wrote to the prime minister warning that taxation rules were “the greatest immediate threat to our medical workforce capacity and, consequently, to patient services.”2

The Department of Health and Social Care for England is currently consulting on its “50:50” proposal to allow senior clinicians to halve their pension contributions and seeking other solutions to the crisis.3