Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 18 July 2023 to Question 194110 on Locums: Nurses, for what reasons locum junior doctors are able to contribute to existing NHS pension funds but nurse practitioners cannot.

The NHS Pension Scheme is an occupational scheme, and both locum junior doctors and locum nurse practitioners cannot access the scheme if they are employed via an agency or are self-employed.

Junior doctors who perform additional work via a National Health Service staff bank can access the scheme, as they have a NHS contract of employment for this work. It would be possible for longer-term locum nurse practitioners to become substantively employed on fixed term contracts as a flexible resource, for instance by primary care organisations. In doing so, they would then hold a contract of employment which would allow them to access the NHS Pension Scheme.