Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of making the NHS Pension Scheme tax unregistered on the (a) pensions and (b) retention rate of senior clinicians in the NHS.

The majority of NHS Pension Scheme members can build their pensions tax-free. An unregistered NHS Pension Scheme tax would result in lost tax relief on contributions for members and the loss of a tax-free lump sum of up to 25% of the value of the pension on retirement. We are implementing pension flexibilities to support senior clinicians, including partial retirement, amending the revaluation date for career average benefits to address the impact of high inflation and working with NHS England to support National Health Service trusts to explore local flexibilities, such as employer contribution recycling.