Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the changes to the annual allowance for pensions in terms of (1) clinical hours worked, and (2) early retirement of senior doctors, over the past 10 years.

Since an individual may choose to reduce their working hours or take early retirement for a range of reasons it is not possible to isolate the impact of any single factor such as pension tax. We continue to monitor retirement patterns and hours worked by senior doctors.

The available evidence does not suggest any substantial change in consultant working hours. NHS Digital’s workforce statistics show the participation rate or average contracted hours per person has been stable for several years. Data from the NHS Business Services Authority, which administers the NHS Pension Scheme, shows that the number of consultants taking voluntary early retirement as a proportion of all consultant retirements has increased since 2012, although it has not changed significantly in more recent years.

The NHS Pension Scheme and well-remunerated careers mean that some senior doctors will amass a pension in excess of their allowances for tax-free pension saving. In 2020, the Government increased thresholds by £90,000 to remove all staff with threshold income below £200,000 from scope of the tapered annual allowance. An estimated 96% of general practitioners and 98% of consultants are out of scope of the taper based on their National Health Service earnings.