The number of GPs earning more than £200,000 a year has risen since last year – despite the Government promising to assess doctors’ pay.
Taxpayers absorbed the cost of these high salaries for no fewer than 950 family doctors in 2008/09, compared with 910 in the previous year.
Critics are concerned that the number of high-earning GPs has risen at a time of supposed financial austerity, even though ministers have tried to clamp down on pay.
While the average GP salary has fallen slightly to £105,300, it is still more than 40% higher than before the lucrative 2004 contract, which saw the vast majority cancel out-of-hours care. It also emerged that more than 4,000 GPs earned more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £152,500.
Charlotte Linacre, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, insisted it was appalling that some doctors were continuing to do so well out of the GP contract despite the recession.
She said: “It is infuriating that under current rules almost 1,000 GPs now have these inflated salaries which have to be covered by cash-strapped taxpayers.”
Copyright © Press Association 2011
Your comments (terms and conditions apply):
I see the GPs monthly earnings, out of which staff salaries, tax, pension, bills such as gas, electric and maintenance of a building – which is a large purpose health centre and the bills equate to quite a large sum. Then there is stationery etc and I can guarantee that after all that there is not much left and this is why most GPs do private work and out of hours – and please rememmber there is also 40 per cent tax to pay,
therefore all this needs to be considered.
– Kerry, West Midlands
