Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that GP pension rules are not a barrier to GPs working additional hours to provide out of hours care and help the NHS recover from the covid-19 outbreak.

NHS Pension Scheme members who reach the £1.073 million lifetime allowance for tax-free saving will have accrued an annual pension of around £46,000 per year and tax-free lump sum of around £139,000. The Government addressed the annual allowance taper issue in March 2020 by increasing thresholds by £90,000, removing all staff with earnings below £200,000 from its scope. This removes the disincentive of taking on additional work, with an estimated 96% of general practitioners now out of scope of the taper based on their National Health Service earnings. Pension tax should not impact on take home pay.