Saturday 16 June 2012

Striking Uk doctors to get £100,000 pension deals

Some of the doctors who will this week paralyse hospitals and GP surgeries in a 24-hour strike over reforms to their pensions can look forward to astonishing £100,000-a-year retirement deals.
Thousands of operations, scans and GPs’ appointments will be cancelled on Thursday when members of the British Medical Association walk out for the first time in nearly 40 years.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that at least 24 doctors are enjoying six-figure incomes in retirement – with one GP receiving £144,000. The Government has described such deals as ‘unsustainable’.
In the money: Some doctors going on strike this week can look forward to £100,000-a-year pensions when they retire
In the money: Some doctors going on strike this week can look forward to £100,000-a-year pensions when they retire
And in the past year alone more than 100 doctors have retired on pensions of between £78,000 and £111,000 a year, which will rise with inflation and are guaranteed for life. In addition, this group received tax-free lump sums of at least £234,000 each.
To earn an equivalent amount in the private sector would require each of the doctors to have accumulated a pension pot of more than £3.5 million.
 

The figures for the 2011-12 financial year include a GP who retired at 60 with an annual income of £111,000 and a lump sum of £334,000; another GP, aged 67, who secured a £107,000 income and a £321,000 lump sum; and a third GP who retired on £99,709 at the age of just 59.
Two hospital consultants also retired on six figures and lump sums of more than £300,000.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley: The BMA is angry about his proposals to make doctors retire later and pay more into their pensions
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley: The BMA is angry about his proposals to make doctors retire later and pay more into their pensions
A further 20 GPs who retired before 2011 are enjoying inflation-boosted retirement incomes that now stand at over £100,000: the highest-earning is on £144,000 a year. It is not known how many consultants who retired before 2011 are also earning six-figure incomes.
By contrast, the average pension in the private sector is worth only £5,860 a year – and two-thirds of employees in the sector are not enrolled in a workplace scheme at all.
NHS pensions data, seen by The Mail on Sunday, shows that a total of 2,500 former employees are on retirement incomes worth more than £67,000 a year. Of these, an estimated three-quarters are doctors.
Those ex-NHS staff enjoying pensions of over £50,000 a year represent just three per cent of the number of annual retirements but account for 22 per cent of all pension payments. Government officials say this means low-paid workers are effectively subsidising the costs of those claiming the larger pensions.
GPs’ pensions are based on their average earnings throughout their careers, while those of consultants are determined by their salaries on retirement.
The BMA says that for 24 hours from midnight on Thursday its members will provide only ‘urgent and emergency care’. Patients will be turned away unless they are deemed seriously ill. Managers estimate that it will cost the NHS up to £40 million.
The union is angry about Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s proposals to make them work for longer and contribute more from their salaries into their retirement fund.

‘The public will not understand why doctors are going on strike when they have this excellent pension deal on the table’

Health Minister Simon Burns
At present, a hospital consultant earning £120,000 a year can expect to retire at 60 on a pension of £48,000 a year. The average GP, earning £106,000, can expect to retire at the same age on £46,000.
Under the changes, a doctor who is now 40 would have to work until they were 62 to receive a full pension, while a 24-year-old doctor would have to stay on until they were 68 – but Ministers point out that they would then retire on an income of £68,000.
Health Minister Simon Burns said: ‘The public will not understand why doctors are going on strike when they have this excellent pension deal on the table.’
The BMA said: ‘NHS staff agreed major changes to their pension scheme in 2008 to make it sustainable for the future. This involved a big hike in contributions, and the introduction of tiered contributions to protect lower-paid workers.
‘Now the Government wants to tear up that deal. Under its plans doctors could pay twice as much for their pensions as civil servants on the same pay – that can’t be fair.’

The wealth - and £1million property portfolio - of key figures backing action

Strike leader: Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of the British Medical Association, is understood to receive a pension from the NHS of about £46,600 a year
Strike leader: Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of the British Medical Association, is understood to receive a pension from the NHS of about £46,600 a year

DR HAMISH MELDRUM, 64:

The BMA chairman and man in charge of this week’s strike has a pension estimated to be at least six times higher than the public-sector average.
He is understood to receive a pension from the NHS of about £46,600 a year.
On top of that, he was paid £95,220 in salary and expenses by the BMA last year, plus a £20,000 contribution to his private pension pot.
Dr Meldrum, who retires from the top job at the BMA at the end of this month, was a GP in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, for more than 30 years.
He has been able to amass a property portfolio in his home city of Edinburgh estimated to be worth up to £1 million.
He and his wife Mhairi recently moved into a £700,000 detached sandstone house in the upmarket Inverleith district, with views over the city to Edinburgh Castle.
Dr Meldrum also owns three buy-to-let flats which he bought in 2004 for £330,000.
He has welcomed the strike ballot as ‘a clear mandate for action’, adding: ‘The Government has effectively torn up a fair, sustainable and affordable deal on NHS pensions.’
Dr Meldrum has been chairman of the BMA for the past five years.
Very comfortable: Dr Meldrum's new £700,000 home in Edinburgh. He has been able to amass a property portfolio in his home city of Edinburgh estimated to be worth up to £1¿million
Very comfortable: Dr Meldrum's new £700,000 home in Edinburgh. He has been able to amass a property portfolio in his home city of Edinburgh estimated to be worth up to £1¿million
A BMA spokesman said: ‘As a recently retired GP and chairman of the (BMA) Council, Dr Meldrum receives an annual honorarium from the BMA and an allowance to invest into a private pension scheme.
'In the past financial year these combined amounts came to £115,188. None of this is public money and the figures are published every year in the BMA annual report.’
Dr Chand Nagpaul: Has made threats to not cooperate with Mr Lansley's NHS reforms if the pensions overhaul goes ahead
Dr Chand Nagpaul: Has made threats to not cooperate with Mr Lansley's NHS reforms if the pensions overhaul goes ahead
Dr Meldrum said the figure of £1 million in relation to his property portfolio was ‘an exaggeration’ but he declined to discuss the matter further.

DR CHAAND NAGPAUL, 51:

He has been at the forefront of the battle over pensions, and warned recently that family doctors were so frustrated by the issue that they might withdraw from new NHS commissioning bodies set up by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.
Threatening to scupper the reform package, Dr Nagpaul said the proposed changes were ‘entirely dependent on the goodwill of GPs’.
He lives in a £900,000 mock-Georgian detached property in a North London suburb and drives a Jaguar with a personalised number plate.
Last night he refused to discuss the likely impact of the strike on patients at his Stanmore practice.

DR GEORGE RAE, 65:

He is familiar to TV viewers as a presenter on BBC1 series Street Doctor, which takes GPs out of their surgeries to treat patients they have not met before.
Three of the six doctors at the practice he runs in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, will join the day of action.
Dr Rae, who earns £100,000 a year, says he is not rostered to work on Thursday so will not be actively involved.
Grand: Dr Nagpaul's £900,000 mock-Tudor home in North London. Dr Nagpaul's Jaguar with personalised plates is not shown in this picture
Grand: Dr Nagpaul's £900,000 mock-Tudor home in North London. Dr Nagpaul's Jaguar with personalised plates is not shown in this picture
But as chairman of the BMA in the North-East, he supports the strike, saying: ‘There will be a degree of inconvenience to the general public but no one will come to any harm.
‘I think the Government would be ill-advised not to take notice of doctors. It’s a job that takes a toll on one’s physical and emotional health.
'I get paid the average for a GP, which is less per year than a Premier League footballer earns in a month.’


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