§ Lord McColl of Dulwichasked Her Majesty's Goverment:
How many nursing staff have left their place of employment and thereby forfeited their terminal gratuity in the last two years. [HL1689]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Slate, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)Data in the form requested arc not readily available. The number of all qualified and unqualified nursing staff in England and Wales who left National Health Service employment in each of the last two financial years without immediate entitlement to a pension award is set out in the table.
Where members leave the pension scheme early, their accrued benefits, including the pension lump sum, can be preserved for payment at age 60. They do not therefore forfeit their terminal gratuity.
Financial year Nursing staff April 1999 to March 2000 9,879 April 2000 to March 2001 11,232 Notes
1. With a million active members, pension scheme records are continually, and retrospectively, being updated to reflect further membership activity and revised data. This data extract represents a "snapshot" in time.
2. The figures may include, therefore, nurses who left the pension scheme but not their employment or nurses who have left one NHS employer and are in the process of joining another in further NHS employment.
3. "Nursing staff" includes qualified nurses. unqualified nurses, nursing assistants, nursing auxiliaries, midwives, health visitors, nurse managers, nurse tutors and physiotherapists.