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RUSSELL WALSHAW turns 60 next month and has been preparing for his retirement for years. 

After 35 years seeing patients at Winterton, North Lincolnshire, his practice has just appointed a replacement and he is already planning extra piano lessons.

He is exactly the kind of GP covered by Alan Milburn’s plan to persuade experienced senior doctors to stay on to help to avoid a looming shortage. But if the Health Secretary offered him £10,000 to stay on until 65, he would not change his mind now. “I am 60 in three weeks’ time so I have already signed the forms for my pension,” Dr Walshaw said yesterday. “I am really pleased to hear that the Government has realised there is a crisis in this age range and that many doctors are leaving at 60 when they have probably got five or perhaps ten years of useful work left in them. “But there are broader issues.

Essentially, £10,000 is £2,000 a year for five years which is not very much. When you have been working for 35 years towards an index-linked pension, there’s every incentive not to work for another five years for another £10,000.” Money was not the main issue for most doctors of retirement age, he added.