Ministers ‘in disgraceful breach of trust’ on doctors’ pensions

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of council at the BMA, said it is a “disgrace” that Ministers “tore up” the pension deal which was only agreed four years ago.

Last week GPs and hospital doctors staged their first industrial action in almost 40 years in protest at the reforms.

Addressing the BMA’s annual conference in Bournemouth, Dr Meldrum said: “The Government and the public have to recognise that this dispute is nothing to do with doctors wanting special treatment or gold-plated pensions. It is about a betrayal of trust.”

He added: “It is a disgrace that doctors should be the highest contributors to their pensions of any in the public sector – higher than judges, higher than civil servants and higher than politicians.”

Dr Meldrum said he was “deeply saddened” that doctors felt they had to resort to industrial action but he praised BMA members who took part in the action.

“Though we demonstrated a powerful and united voice on Thursday while also delivering on our essential commitment to maintain patient safety, no one should be triumphalist, no one should be rushing to repeat or escalate it,” he said.

He said: “It’s a disgrace that the Government has torn up a deal that was negotiated only four years ago – a deal which all parties agreed made the NHS scheme sustainable for the future, a deal that saw doctor pension contributions increase by over 40 per cent, coupled with a move to a normal pension age of 65.

“In 2008, we worked in partnership with employers and with Government and accepted huge changes to our pensions which we trusted would last for the foreseeable future. The Government, by imposing a further set of wholesale changes – changes that simply cannot be justified, and which no staff group thinks fair – has broken that trust.”

Dr Meldrum said the union wanted to get back round the table to find a “fair solution”, adding: “We want to get back to negotiations along with all the health unions.