How is the PM candidate who wanted to slash doctors’ pay by 10% going to stop them quitting?
Liz Truss: does she want to help NHS doctors – or harm them?
Liz Truss reckons she’s going to stop doctors from leaving the NHS – a far cry from her plan in 2009 when she wanted to cut their pay by 10 per cent, a sure-fire way to send them packing.
The Tory leadership candidate reckons she will change conditions relating to doctors’ lifetime pension cap – the amount they can save into a pension tax-free.
Once they hit that cap – currently frozen at £1 million until 2026 by Rishi Sunak – they face costly tax bills in they continue working full-time. So a recent poll showed that nearly seven in 10 surgeons had reduced their workload as a result.
Doctors cannot opt out of paying into their pensions, even after hitting the cap – hence the problem of high tax bills if they continue working full-time.
One wonders how many doctors would be wooed by Truss’s plan if it was put into practice in tandem with her 2009 plan to cut doctors’ pay by 10 per cent.
She avoided answering a question about this – by attacking the BBC – during an interview conducted by Alastair Stewart on GB News.
He mistakenly said the report in which she made the suggestion – for the think tank Reform – had been published in 2019.
Truss corrected him, then said: “I always thought you had high-quality standards at GB News… It’s not the BBC, you actually get your facts right.”
That sideswipe drew a wave of laughter and allowed her to avoid what could have been a difficult question.
But here’s a question that deserves an answer: if Liz Truss was prepared to do the dirty on doctors in 2009, how can we expect her to do right by them now?
Source: Liz Truss: I’ll halt NHS doctor exodus
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why would doctors leave anyway? they’re not qualified for anything else….and they’d most likely be denied employment at macdonald’s or any supermarket…as they’re over qualified and any employer would expect them to leave soon as anything better came up! They’re locked in….