Drs' payrise should be funded by cutting 23.7% govt pension contribution

[eyeses]

The Telegraph today suggests that the Government could fund a significant payrise to Resident Doctors by reducing our surprisingly high payments into their pensions.

"Yet what is often forgotten is that these doctors enjoy bumper pensions worth close to 75pc of their salaries in retirement – and which are guaranteed to rise with inflation each year.
Doctors enjoy index-linked, taxpayer-funded “defined benefit” schemes, many of which pay a proportion of the recipient’s final salary from the day they retire.
Under the NHS scheme, staff contribute between 5.2pc and 12.5pc of their salaries while the state contributes a vast 23.7pc each year.
By comparison, private sector workers, who are almost all enrolled in “defined contribution” pensions where the value of the final pot depends on investment performance, receive a contribution of just 3pc from their employer.
The NHS is paying out nearly £1bn a month in staff pensions, with almost 2,000 staff receiving pensions of more than £100,000 annually – a figure that has more than doubled in a year."

AIBU - No, junior Drs deserve that we fund a big pay rise and huge pension
IANBU - We pay far too much into Dr's pensions and they want the money now

What Resident Doctors don't want you to know about their pay

If you are not happy, get another job, or are you just sticking around for your massive tax payer funded pension…

If you aren’t happy with your private sector pension join the public sector then instead of having a fit about it or are you just sticking around to moan and whinge about others because you are too lazy to do anything about it.

FYI public sector employees are tax payers

Unfortunately all too many private sector companies which used to provide (fairly) decent pensions went bust because they simply cost too much.

But the very low earners do very well out of pensions. They get 2/3 final salary PLUS full state pension, which is often a lot more than they were earning when they were working, particularly the likes of "assistants" in the NHS and schools etc especially if working part time. Ie if they were on £12k when they retired, they could be on £9k occupational pension AND £12k state pension! I know rules have changed so later joiners won't get the same, but I've had loads of clients over the years whose combined public sector and state pensions have exceeded their wages when working. Then people wonder why we have a massive deficit and we pay more on interest than education! It's simply not sustainable.

Maybe we could save a few billion, enough to fund pensions, by cutting the vast transfers to the military industry, instead? Invest in health, not death & suffering?

A radical thought in these days of brainwashed militarism.

I guess junior doctors just don’t have the access to politicians, and influence over them, that the senior executives of huge ‘defence’ industries do. For some obscure reason.

Join a union, raise your bar, don't try to lower it for everyone else.

This is not correct. At all. The final salary pension, certainly for NHS workers, ended some time ago. I’d be over the bloody moon if I thought I was going to get 2/3 of my salary as a pension when I retire. It will be nothing near that.

Which NHS employees get 2/3 final salary?

Loads of public sector workers are quitting (eg doctors moving abroad / private practise) or simply not signing up in the first place (teaching). If an employer cannot attract or retain staff then they should perhaps question if the overall package is attractive.

To get 2/3 your final salary as pension in local government, unless on a final salary scheme which was phased out quite some time ago, would require many years of service.

If someone has worked in a low paid, probably vital to the community, role for most of their life then I’d say they deserve a decent pension.

The DB scheme has been shut to new entrants for years. Current doctors are on a defined contribution average salary scheme.

Then they should have the same wages too.

@1457bloom are you not going to be getting a state pension?

As it goes, I've got one of these massive bloated gold-plated all-singing all-dancing public sector DB pensions. On current contribution rates it will currently pay me about £8k a year in retirement, if I ever live long enough to claim it. Fortunately I have other provision from my previous stints in the private sector. Some of you need to stop believing what you read in certain newspapers.

Oh, that'll solve it and they'll all come running back to work for the NHS, won't it?

With this £2k cap on salary sacrifice coming in I can see more private sector employers offering a bigger pension and a smaller salary more like the public sector in a few years - it would be one way to save paying some NI. The tide may turn.

Pensions don't pay day to day bills... and no one knows their future health or longevity.

I wonder how many expressing opinions like yours would be saying the same after a Doctor and team saves their childs life or their own?

I listened Streeting, he should defect to the Tory party, would fit right in, as would Starmer

NHS pensions are unfunded so reducing the scheme to current workers wouldn't save any money.

My two children both doctors would just like a training post and maybe a 37 hour working week.

What's your opinion on this OP? It would be good to know, otherwise this could read like a post designed to drive traffic to the Telegraph or goad posters into yet more public sector bashing.

More divide and rule crap.

How about we have good conditions and pensions for staff in all sectors? The last people I want to be disgruntled are care staff and clinical staff..they have a hard enough job as it is.

The Telegraph is big on distracting from the real greed merchants in our society

What do you mean, employers e g. NHS Trusts pay in the 23/25% each month to the pension fund just as each school pays it in to TPS and LGPS each month. It does indeed exist!

Doctors are extremely underpaid relative to their skill, education and responsibility level. The working conditions are also dreadful. We shouldn’t be cutting pensions, we should be restoring pay to a level commensurate with roles of equivalent size

One difference people tend to forget is that if you have a public sector pension and you die it is generally cut by 50% if you have a spouse and there are no further payments made if you are unmarried.

With private sector contributory pensions the pot goes to a nominated beneficiary or beneficiaries. This is currently inheritance tax free (tho Labour tax laws will change this shortly).

This key difference is rarely taken into account when the press bleat about public sector pensions.

No. NHS and TPS are unfunded schemes.

LGPS is funded, although the contributions paid by each council vary.