Military doctors call for pension revisions

The UK will be unable to deploy troops abroad unless it reforms doctors’ pensions within the armed forces, medics have warned.

Many specialist consultants have threatened to resign within the next 12 months over the “disproportionate” impact which tax rules have on them, the British Medical Association (BMA) annual meeting in Belfast heard.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chairman, warned that defence medical services, which provide healthcare to the military, “will continue to haemorrhage talented medics” if the crisis is not addressed.

Delegates at the meeting voted to accept a motion calling for the BMA to push for urgent action from the Treasury and Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Current tax rules mean that doctors working both within the NHS and armed forces face high tax bills on their pensions if they exceed set limits.

This is causing medics to reduce their working hours or end their careers early.

The policy has a “disproportionate effect” on doctors within the armed forces, who are expected to retire earlier and therefore accrue their pension faster, the meeting heard.

Dr Adam Collins, proposing the motion on behalf of the BMA armed forces committee, said that for doctors serving in the military, the rules lead to “bigger breaches of the annual allowance much earlier in the career”.

“These impacts of the punitive pension taxation scheme, exacerbated as they are for armed forces’ doctors, are now the most-commonly cited cause for armed forces doctors to leave the service prematurely,” he told delegates.

“Indeed, in a document seen by the armed forces committee, within some key specialities, every consultant has indicated an intention to resign from service within the next 12 months.

“If this situation is allowed to continue, loss of key specialities will mean that MoD will be unable to deploy a military hospital abroad, and this in turn would mean that MoD would be unable to deploy troops abroad for whatever reason the country may need.”