8,500 NHS staff have £1m pension pots ... and the burden is set to soar

Gold-plated: Almost 8,500 NHS doctors are benefiting from retirement funds worth more than £1million

Almost 8,500 are benefiting from gold-plated retirement funds - worth £33,000 a year - paid for by the taxpayer.

And that figure will rise "dramatically" in future as the huge pay rises recently offered to GPs and consultants begin to have an effect on their final salary schemes.

A TaxPayers' Alliance study found that the liabilities for doctors who have already retired have reached £8.5billion.

Corin Taylor, the campaign group's research director, said: "Unfunded public sector pension liabilities are reaching completely unsustainable levels - and given the boom in GPs' pay it is one that will only get worse in the future.

Every household will have to pay up to £40,000 over the next few decades to fund gold-plated retirement benefits for public sector employees, including £1million pension pots for the NHS elite.

"Urgent change is needed to reduce the bill to taxpayers - for a start, the pension age for existing public sector employees should be raised."

The retirement age for those already working in the public sector is 60, compared with a state pension age of 65, rising to 68 by 2046.

The figures from the NHS Business Services Authority, released under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that 8,449 Health Service employees are receiving a pension of at least £33,000 a year.

This is the equivalent of a £1million pot, according to experts.

The figures do not show the types of staff receiving the benefits, but most will be highly-paid GPs and hospital consultants, as well as some senior managers.

A lucrative new contract introduced by Labour saw GPs' pay rise by 55 per cent over three years to an average of £113,000 - while the number of hours they work has fallen.

Hospital consultants have also enjoyed pay rises, taking salaries to around £120,000.

There are concerns because public sector schemes are far more generous than those offered by most businesses - raising fears of "pensions apartheid".

Research has shown that private sector workers pay almost as much into the gold-plated pension schemes of those in the public sector as they do into their own.

They contribute 91p towards the retirement of State employees via their taxes for every £1 they invest for themselves.

Ros Altmann of the Pensions Action Group said: "The number of doctors on £1million pension pots will increase dramatically very soon, because their pay has gone up and many are due to hit retirement.

"Pensions are the biggest problem the public sector has and the Government has not even recognised it exists.

"Ministers are making continual promises to public sector employees in terms of pensions and these will have to be paid. The Government has been hugely irresponsible."