NHS Pensions: Frontline Patient Care

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to answer this urgent question. These administrative delays are deeply worrying. They make financial planning for those affected very difficult and, more importantly, stop doctors taking on additional work for the NHS as they could face large and unknown tax penalties. That was highlighted at the start of the year, when 4,000 NHS staff missed out on pension tax compensation after administrative failings.

This is having a direct impact on patient care, so how will the Minister reassure NHS staff regarding their pension entitlements, and when can they expect to see the compensation the Minister mentioned to encourage them back into the workforce? Can she assure the House that the Government are taking steps to prevent doctors with missing pension records from being unfairly penalised? Can she tell us how the Government will address the 156,000 years of missing pension data for GPs? Finally, will the major reorganisation of the NHS—especially the 50% cut to the organisations that oversee local health services—potentially compound this problem?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. She highlights a number of important issues regarding the complexity for the NHS Business Services Authority of dealing with this. There is a large number of high earners in this scheme. With regard to tax liabilities, that makes the system complex, as does the movement of doctors throughout the system in their career.

One issue I discussed with the independent reviewer yesterday is the need to ensure there is a technical look at solutions to issues such as missing years. The hon. Lady is right to highlight that changes make a difference to following people’s careers through the system. There are wider lessons, which I have already started to discuss with the reviewer, about how we make the best use of technology so that we can track people through their careers and give confidence to the current workforce that we are addressing this not just for the cohort who have immediate issues but for the future. That is the sort of action this Government are taking. We do not do sticking plasters. We are looking at this very seriously.