Eleven medical bodies have written to Chancellor of the Exchequer calling on him to use the Budget to provide a long-term solution to the pension taxation crisis that threatens to penalise senior clinicians for going to work.

In a letter to Rishi Sunak, the organisations, which collectively represent tens of thousands of doctors and dentists, say reform of pension taxation policies must be implemented as soon as possible. They add:

“We are encouraged that the government has committed to announcing a resolution to this issue in the Budget, but it must be the right one; one which will safeguard the NHS workforce for the long term.”

Faced with a significant number of experienced clinicians reducing their hours or taking early retirement, rather than hand over most of their income in additional tax, the Scottish government introduced a temporary scheme in November giving eligible NHS staff the option to have their employer pension contributions – on which they were paying the penalties – paid to them as part of their basic pay.

That scheme runs out at the end of March.

At the start of this month Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, wrote to the previous Chancellor, Sajid Javid, saying the onus was on him to deliver a permanent fix for the issue in next month’s budget.

The UK Treasury says that a review of the so-called pensions annual allowance taper has been underway since before Christmas as part of a programme to assess how current and future NHS staffing can meet demand and transform care, adding that the review ‘will report at Budget’.

The organisations signing today’s letter to Rishi Sunak are the BMA, the Royal Colleges of: Surgeons, Surgeons of Edinburgh, Physicians, Pathologists, General Practitioners, Paediatrics and Child Health, Radiologists, Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; and the Faculty of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the UK Faculty of Public Health.