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Doctors’ groups have begun responding to the emergency scheme ministers and NHS chiefs have come up with to stop what critics call the “NHS pensions tax trap” deterring hospital consultants and GPs in England from working extra shifts this winter.

The British Medical Association, which represents about 70% of the UK’s doctors, has given the proposal a cautious welcome.

Under it, doctors who work enough hours this year (2019-20) to then receive a hefty bill linked to the rising value of their pension will have that bill in effect paid for by the NHS. The unprecedented move could cost the NHS between tens and hundreds of millions of pounds.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA’s ruling council, said:

These proposals under discussion could, if properly implemented, provide the respite needed to enable significant numbers of doctors to increase the work they are doing, giving vital patient care at a time of unprecedented demand. However, we don’t yet have important details about how such a scheme will work; details that are crucial to the BMA and to the tens of thousands of doctors that we represent in order to provide the necessary reassurance that doctors can take on additional work without this resulting in any financial penalty. We look forward to having those details in the very near future, and call on the next government to urgently scrap the annual allowance in defined benefit schemes such as the NHS, a solution proposed by their own advisory body, the Office for Tax Simplification.

However, EveryDoctor, which campaigns to improve medics’ working conditions in the NHS, dismissed the plan as a “short-term fix” that would not solve the problem of an estimated 40% of doctors reducing their workloads in order to avoid being hit by a bill for up to £100,000.

A spokesperson said: