Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the annual pension contribution cap has had on retention and recruitment of staff in the NHS.

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 National Health Service earnings.

An individual may choose to reduce their working hours or take early retirement for a range of reasons. The Department monitors retirement patterns and hours worked by senior doctors. NHS Digital’s workforce statistics show the participation rate, or average contracted hours per person, for consultants has been stable for several years. Data from the NHS Business Services Authority shows that while the number of consultants taking voluntary early retirement as a proportion of all consultant retirements has increased since 2012, it has not changed significantly in more recent years.