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

And because the private healthcare some people think is so wonderful relies on the NHS to train its staff.

This is a good point. I used to work in the NHS and moved to academia. Historically moving across to being a senior lecturer meant a step up in pay.

Now my old job in the NHS pays significantly more than being a senior lecturer. To the extent when we advertised (ha ha) a job a year ago, people I spoke to to encourage them to apply for it said no chance as they would be earning a lot more in their NHS job.

I appreciate that's allied health professionals and nurses on A4C pay scales and not doctors. But the principle is the same. No, I don't think it should be a race to the bottom but as a country we aren't (or we're told we're not) in a position for better wage increases - both in the private and public sector.

Ummm..... because of recruitment freezes and trusts going to direct to overseas Doc's... another reason for the strike

All healthcare experts acknowledge NHS doctor shortages.

Precisely

There are doctors shortages. There are lots of UKMG without jobs. The country is skint.

The best thing the BMA could do for the NHS is to take a pay cut and ask that more doctor jobs are created with the saving. Less doctor stress, shorter working house, more people employed. Win win!

But no, they want yet more money, which will just make the problem worse.

ah yes BUPA et al don't train staff nor will they take chronic complex medical/healthcare conditions.

Let alone any existing condition, even if 4 or 5 years since treatment.

I agree.

Drs are a pretty skilled profession and they study for years. Plus we really kind of need them!

A lot of people also join public sector jobs at a knowing sacrifice of much higher wages in the private sector because of the pensions. So taking people’s pension would be a pretty shitty thing to do!

Public sector workers are not the enemy, whatever billionaires and their client media would have you think.

My employers healthcare policy covers known conditions. This isn’t unusual.

But those staff all work for the NHS as well. The NHS doesn't lose them. Private healthcare takes up the slack from the NHS. Thank God for small mercies. They do the simple day to day dermatology, hips/knees, etc leaving the NHS capacity to handle the more complex. I don't see an issue with that.

Why?
They can leave and go abroad, the world is crying out for medical staff.

The previous pay rise to doctors cost £350m, the wider strike cost the country £1.7bn and 1.5m cancelled appointments.

Not settling is economic madness.

This is what I thought until they rejected the latest offer. I dont know how they can justify it. They ignore their huge pensions which has doctors retiring or going part time because they hit £1m before retirement and have to pay tax on it. That is an astronomical amount of money, far larger than any other public or private sector worker, ignored by the BMA. I agreed with the pay rise last year but I never thought they would come back for the same again a year later. When will it end? The BMA have demonsrated that they are not to be trusted.

Settling is madness as where will their demands end. And 11 people applying for each job now, if you cut the pay by 10% you’ll still fill jobs very easily indeed. Demand and supply is what sets pay in the private sector. Why not the public sector too? It’s our money being wasted.

But I’m only pointing out the economic basis of pay, and how illogical pay demands are. I’m not suggesting a pay cut, but just that those that have secure doctor nhs jobs are the lucky ones amongst junior doctors and they ought to be grateful.

Well, clearly they don't see your pov, so the strikes will continue and more experienced staff will leave.

The wider economy will suffer and the costs will continue outstrip the costs to settle, bear in mind, they'll accpt far less than their previous pay settlement.

The Doctors want a multi year deal, with an independent pay review body, which would remove the threat of them coming back for more.

That only works if it’s a funded scheme not a ponzi scheme. If it’s a ponzi scheme then current contributions are being used to pay off current pensioners so to increase pay and reduce the fake “contributions” from those of working age would mean there’s insufficient money now to pay those already retired. Ultimately the Government will need to pass legislation so that taxpayer underwriting of these schemes is removed. Then, if the scheme cannot pay out the promised benefits it will go bankrupt just like one in the private sector: pensioners will either need to agree a more reasonable and lower payout or accept a small amount of compensation and no pension because the scheme will cease to exist. These taxpayer funded ponzi schemes are simply not affordable anymore and this was always going to be the inevitable outcome due to demographic changes. It’s mathematically impossible for the country to continue to pay the state pension and public sector pensions on current terms/ criteria.

It says a lot that you've not addressed the possibility that we see an exodus abroad instead

There is a global shortage of healthcare workers. Your assessment of supply and demand must account for this, or it'll be useless.

Why are so many applying for each job in the UK then? Whats the big attraction?

I voted yes to your statement even though I’m generally against cuts to public sector pension and pay. Why? Because a lot of public sector jobs use the pension as a way of retaining staff eg teaching (I’m an ex teacher). For many, the pension is one of the only reasons to stay in a probably lower paying job in the public sector BUT doctors/dentists are essentially self employed and already command a high wage compared to other workers. They can’t have it both ways.

Well not enough suitable candidates are, considering our vacancy rates!

But for the ones who are, the existing terms and conditions are evidently sufficient. Obviously this doesn't mean they're going to continue applying and staying at the same rates if we change them.

The NHS still provides world class training, they know that with a few experience they can have the pick of countries to work in.

How do we address the lack of retention?

Exactly. It's one thing recruiting people, albeit we're not doing that well enough given the vacancy rates. We also need them to stay!

I have lots of friends who are UKMG who cannot get job. They are LIVID that the BMA has snuck pay demands into a strike ballot yet again. LIVID. They want jobs here in the UK. They deserve jobs in the UK. But the BMA keeps undermining the URGENT jobs argument by moaning about pay, and argument that so many people think it unjustified.

The FY2 doctors would be excellent candidates. Truly excellent. They’d work for any money. But the UK government isn’t restricting the places to UK graduates (the vast majority of countries protect their own graduates) and the BMA aren’t helping but hindering.

The wider economy will suffer and the costs will continue outstrip the costs to settle, bear in mind, they'll accpt far less than their previous pay settlement.

Far less than 30%? How gob-smackingly generous of them. Sorry, but I’m with Wes Streeting on this (unusually). Self-indulgent strikers with zero public support. Pay restoration would be lovely for us all, but we’ll be lucky to hold onto our jobs under this cack-handed government. I’m pleased that we’re finally shining a light on doctors’ crazy generous pension scheme though. I’m married to a consultant, am the family “book keeper”, and the amount of gaslighting by medics over their pay was outrageous - no mention of increments, paid overtime, unsociable hours pay (none of which are available to comparable professionals in the private sector).

OTOH the sooner we bring the failed NHS experiment crashing down and replace it with a sensible European model, the better, so let them crack on. 🤷‍♀️ We’ve had communist healthcare for so long, we’ve been desensitized to a few avoidable deaths every flu season, so I doubt we’ll even notice.

FY2 doctors are not the solution to the consultant shortage.

If you're going to make arguments about supply and demand, they have to address what's going to happen when we make things less attractive for doctors with options.

I don’t know of many UK consultants that would consider flipping to work overseas though, do you? They have aging parents and kids in tow usually. We need to get more UK junior doctors into consultant training though. Again, another argument the BMA could focus on instead of pay.

Let’s let the doctors who are greedy leave and good riddance to them, don’t come back. If you think you are worth more get a job somewhere else or retrain.