Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans the Government has to support doctors who want to continue working after reaching retirement age.

Employers are responsible for engaging doctors and other staff about their plans for retirement as they approach their “normal pension age” which will be 60, 65, or state pension age depending on which National Health Service pension scheme they are in.

The Government is supporting doctors who want to continue working after reaching retirement age by offering a range of flexible options including “winding down”, “drawing down”, “stepping down”, or “retire and return”.

These options are explained in NHS Business Services Authority guidance which is available at the following link:

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/member-hub/applying-your-pension

The Department supplemented this with its own ‘Guidance on the re-employment of staff in receipt of their NHS Pension Scheme benefits’, published last year at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/re-employing-staff-who-receive-an-nhs-pension

Note:

Normal pension ages of 60, 65, and state pension age refer to the 1995, 2008 and 2015 NHS Pension Schemes respectively.