Even if the man/woman worked a double shift every day they worked, it'd still be impossible to get to £375k in overtime - even basing on a £150k salary, without some form of fraud/collusion that is...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36898881
Or inaccurate reporting
For all the moaning about costs, resources and the rest the NHS really does know how to **** itself with no lube....
Though I assume it's another case of exceptions vs the rule
That doesn't sound too unreasonable.
In their article they quote £600 for 4 hours. Typical shift 12-16 hours, means roughly 50 days a year.
Quite possible for a part time consultant to get that.
What option do Trusts currently have? The NHS is facing severe doctor shortages at the moment to the point many services have completely unsafe staffing levels.
If the government made conditions better, paid reasonable salaries, put doctors through training, then there wouldn't be a supply and demand situation.
@br you are assuming overtime is paid at 1.5 times, as the piece says it could be paid at 3x and/or it could be a fixed payment for a full or partial shift ?
Secondly why shouldn't a top medical speciaist make £500k ? A private doctor / surgeon could make multiples of that.
These figures will just be those Trusts that have responded truthfully to FOI's too 8)
[i]In their article they quote £600 for 4 hours. Typical shift 12-16 hours, means roughly 50 days a year.[/i]
That's 'only' £120k...
[I]@br you are assuming overtime is paid at 1.5 times, as the piece says it could be paid at 3x and/or it could be a fixed payment for a full or partial shift ?[/I]
Nope, just do the sums - we're talking of payments over and above salary. And I've worked in the NHS so well aware of how the hours work and also how crap some of the management is (and also how incestuous it is...).
A typical lawyer charges £300-500 an hour fwiw. Barristers double that
Secondly why shouldn't a top medical speciaist make £500k ?
Because society cannot afford to pay those wages.
Funny that an austerity enthusiast like yourself also thinks that these wages are realistic. You even fled the country when it meant your own taxes were raised a little to pay for these services.
One of my best mates is a consultant anaesthetist.
He's often called out to work overtime, there's a pay structure in place that is rigid and inflexible - indeed, he's offered to work pro bono knowing full well the financial pressure the NHS is under.
It's almost as if the powers that be want to torpedo the NHS's finances by forcing a culture of greed from the top down.
Fortunately there's an expected £350 million per week due to bolster the coffers.
Phew! That was close!
Though I assume it's another case of exceptions vs the rule
From the article, that was the highest paid consultant in 2015/2016, who had worked extreme hours due to a shortage of consultants and high demand.
The second highest paid in 2015/2016 got £170,000 less than that - so the top one is clearly an outlier.
The real reason for this piece suddenly being news is revealed here:
The Department of Health in England said it was looking to tackle the issue in England by renegotiating the consultant contract.It wants to remove the opt-out that allows consultants to refuse to do non-emergency work at weekends.
Ministers blame this for creating a situation where doctors can command high rates for extra shifts.
i.e. it is the opening salvo in the renegotiation of the consultant contracts (since the junior doctor contracts went so well).
Of course, like the junior doctor contracts, this is [s]complete bollocks[/s] [i]misdirection and misinformation[/i], because [url= http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/less-than-one-per-cent-of-nhs-consultants-use-control-loophole-to-opt-out-of-weekend-work-10436080.html ]a Freedom of Information request has already revealed that less than 1% (35 out of the 5,661 consultants checked) actually use the weekend opt-out.[/url]
Nice if you can get that sort of work
If they are saving lives it seems a very cheap price to pay.
Remind me how much professional footballers are on, footballers who don't save lives......
(yes, bad comparison I know but nevertheless!)
Payments of about £600 in overtime for a four-hour shift are common - three to four times what consultants get normally - but there was some evidence of payments around the £1,000 mark.
So at best that would be 375 four hour shifts, or 1500hours of overtime. Squeeze 3 overtime shifts in a day and thats 125 twelve hour days of work. I guess you could achieve that as a consultant with part time 'normal' hours. Just. Blooming bonkers though. As said above you would hope this is the exception to the rule but good titter material for the chattering classes who want to do down the whole system.
That's 'only' £120k...
Oh yes 😳
You get my drift though...
Because society cannot afford to pay those wages.
Really? So why should top business people be allowed to be paid millions per year (my old finance director boss was on £1.5m + shares etc 10 yrs ago), yet a hospital consultant who can save your life be paid less?
Really? So why should top business people be allowed to be paid millions per year yet a consultant who can save your life be paid less?
Difficult comparison isn't it though?
A profitable company can pay it's staff from it's profits. A government can then tax a company to fund what it spends. What a society can afford is not a simple equation. It's a very difficult time when we start proposing what people are allowed to earn and probably an end to the NHS.
Wowzers, it would take Wayne Rooney 8-9 days to earn that, and he can KICK A BALL.
Even in the socialist utopia that is the NHS, those who have worked very hard and gained special rare skills can, and should be paid appropriately for them, working lots of hours doing so should earn them lots of money or a pittance to some people. I noticed Kylie Jenner is currently bleating that she's broke, because she spends $7m a year on parties and private jet flights she's down to her last $2.5m, bless her - if only she could trim down her lifestyle to that of the consultant in the BBC story, she'd be able to make it last 5 years before she had to make another endorsed Instagram post for a few hundred thousand bucks.
But of course that's shocking headline in Britain that someone who is actually bloody useful to society makes a lot of money because we hate people who have done better in their careers than us. Unless of course they can knock a football around, then we love them and happily fork over £100+ a month or more to Rupert Murdoch or £65 for a polyester t-shirt to keep them in Pink Bentleys.
Priorities, all to ****.
What a society can afford is not a simple equation.
Especially as you need to factor in all the taxes that will be paid by people who's lives this consultant has saved.
As said above you would hope this is the exception to the rule but good titter material for the chattering classes
Rates that I am aware of are £125hr for a consultant. £75 for a middle grade, and £35 for a junior.
Then of course the government introduced the cap rate for locums, which was ridiculous and an insult. I cant see a table of this online at the minute, but this has now been altered, as pay levels were too low.
You even fled the country when it meant your own taxes were raised a little to pay for these services.
Yes but now we have the brexit money the NHS is safe in his hands and can afford it 😉
Graham'S nails the real issue - headline ot make us all think they are overpaid and milking our precious NHS
Really? So why should top business people be allowed to be paid millions per year (my old finance director boss was on £1.5m + shares etc 10 yrs ago), yet a hospital consultant who can save your life be paid less?
One assumes, that much like Rooney and the Barrister, they bring in more money from the free market where people can make a choice on whether to buy a Rooney shirt or have their legal problem sorted by the best (supply and demand).
Not everyone who needs healthcare can make these choices.
Fortunately there are wealthy folks like Jamba who use their wealth to support private health care out of their own pockets rather than sponging off the NHS, thusly easing the pressure.
I'm sure that people enter the NHS to save lives and not to make money as a primary reason. There is more to life than money and better measurements of success than financial wealth.
Because society cannot afford to pay those wages.
Of course society can afford to pay those wages. Its just that society chooses not to.
i feel mostly sorry for the consultant in the story (assuming it's true), he/she didn't earn that much working 9-5, with weekends off, and 6 weeks holiday a year at a time of their choosing.
i suspect it was in the order of 100 hours/week, with weekends, triple-shifts, christmas, etc.
that's divorce/breakdown/burnout territory, possibly all 3.
nhs staff are the only people worth this kind of money....imho.
A typical lawyer charges £300-500 an hour fwiw. Barristers double that
Yes but a lawyer's / Barrister's hourly rate also recovers significant overheads such as office space, admin support costs etc. The hourly rate for a Locum Doctor doesn't need to cover any of these and yet the hourly rate is still in that range.
As I understand it, the Doctor's Union is of the view that anything over than 60 hours a week is very unsafe, so as well as the reported scale of the overtime payments (enough to employ 4-8 additional doctors) the Doctor concerned is very likely to be presenting a clinical risk to his / her patients.
The bit that shocked me is that the BMI has been negotiating a revised deal for a year and it's still not agreed and 'may' be done by the autumn! How much has this cost and what % of NHS staff are covered by the new agreement?
As with anything there are some good questions to ask..
(raised above)
Why is that being asked?
Why is it being asked now?
Who would benefit from this?
Is it actually representative of the real situation or the extremes?
If you ask yourself these questions every time your read on of these maybe we could have a proper discussion about things like pay.
No issue with this. I suspect like GrahamS states this is the start of contract negotiations!
You even fled the country when it meant your own taxes were raised a little to pay for these services.
MSP taxes where raised to pay for Labour's unwillingness to cut excessive government spending in the wake of the recession. The Tories have ring fenced education and promised a greater increase on the NHS budget than did Labour at the GE. Marginal rate would have gone up 20% plus removal of personal allowance - £10's thousands extra. As I have posted many times we need a grown up conversation about how to pay for the services we want. In the UK for the average worker tax day is 9th May, in France its 29th July and that doesn't include the fact that they pay 5% VAT on food and full 19.6% VAT of utility bills.
just a reminder that is a meaningless bollocks statement, akin to 350 million. It's used all the time no government spending is ringfenced.have ring fenced
Also a proper groen up conversation about tax doesn't compare apples and oranges, tax is about the entire economy not just income tax. It should be considered as a whole.
On other threads we have had posts about how our NHS is more "efficient" than others around the world and in Europe. Its not more efficient its providing an inferior service for less money. If we want a quality health service provision we need to pay for it and be honest about what it costs which neither Labour nor Conservatives are doing
Its not more efficient its providing an inferior service for less money.
Got a source for that?
Its not more efficient its providing an inferior service for less money.
You are aware that it is perfectly possible to be providing an inferior service for less money and still be more efficient?
Graham'S nails the real issue - headline ot make us all think they are overpaid and milking our precious NHS
As opposed to all those wonderful managers who do huge amounts of work for a pittance.
If there's a shortage of consultants can't we get a few more from overseas? Ooh, sorry that's a bad thing now isn't it?
i guess if you keep beating the shit out of the Ts&Cs when the private operators swing in the medical staff will be happy to move over.
As opposed to all those wonderful managers who do huge amounts of work for a pittance
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/nhs-reform/mythbusters/nhs-managers
In other words, the NHS has a managerial workforce that is one-third the size of that across the economy as a whole.The NHS in England is a £100 billion-a-year-plus business. It sees 1 million patients every 36 hours, spending nearly £2 billion a week. Aside from the banks, the only companies with a larger turnover in the FTSE 100 are the two global oil giants Shell and BP. If the NHS were a country it would be around the thirtieth largest in the world.
If anything, our analysis seems to suggest that the NHS, particularly given the complexity of health care, is under- rather than over-managed
[i]If you ask yourself these questions every time your read on of these maybe we could have a proper discussion about things like pay. [/i]
Not sure if you noticed, but I wasn't questioning the 'value' of the payments, just finding it hard to see how someone could actually generate so much overtime 'legally'.
ie - did they actually work it, who signed it off (related?), did they call in sick for their statutory hours etc
If we want a quality health service provision we need to pay for it and be honest about what it costs which neither Labour nor Conservatives are doing
The sad thing is that the average member of the public can't say enough good things about our NHS when they experience it first hand (I'm thinking the experience when there is something proper wrong with you rather than the walk-in A&E experience or the trying to get a gp appointment experience at the 'light' end of broken) yet pucker up at the point of voting and like the sound of low taxes. The political parties go for the path of least resistance and promise what the voter thinks they want rather than try to persuade them that more tax might be a good thing. As much as we like to think to the contrary, we don't live in a particularly benevolent society and until we do the NHS will never be supported financially as much as we really should want it to be.
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That chart up there shows tax paid by workers on an average salary.
We already know that workers on average salaries in the UK make no net contribution to the running of the state - this is offset by relatively small number of individuals (300,000 people or so) who pay the bulk of the cost for running public services.
So the debate should actually be -[i] are people on average incomes willing to pay significantly more tax to improve the funding of the NHS?[/i]
My hunch would be everyone agrees with the principle of raising NHS funding based on an assumption "others" will pay more - but the level of support for more spending disappears faster than a newly appointed member of the shadow cabinet when it becomes clear they personally need to pay more tax.
i'm on an entirely average salary, i'd be happy to pay more tax.
although it would probably help if the NHS wasn't being deliberately driven into the ground...
What is the average salary and what do you mean by average?
We already know that workers on average salaries in the UK make no net contribution to the running of the state - this is offset by relatively small number of individuals (300,000 people or so) who pay the bulk of the cost for running public services.
Perhaps I'm not understanding, but are you really saying that most public services are paid for by only 300,000 very high earners? The rest of us contribute nothing? Isn't it more that most of us pay our way on average, and those at the top end help out those at the bottom end?
That chart up there shows tax paid by workers on an average salary.
Partly it's to show that the UK is still low tax for workers and it also goes back to my earlier point that a discussion about tax, spending etc should never be limited to income tax as it's very subjective.
Perhaps I'm not understanding, but are you really saying that most public services are paid for by only 300,000 very high earners? The rest of us contribute nothing? Isn't it more that most of us pay our way on average, and those at the top end help out those at the bottom end?
It's not quite the top 300,000 pay for everything but when looked at as a purely financial transaction (whether this is a good way of looking at things or not is another question) then something like the top 40% pay in more than they get out (subject to certain assumptions and averaging) whilst the rest get more out than they contribute. The cross over based on households gross income is around £35,000.
I'm sure that people enter the NHS to save lives and not to make money as a primary reason.
There are definitely a small percentage who enter the NHS, with the aim of doing private practice. These numbers are small, and falling as the costs increase, plus the fact that to be come rich in private practice your literally have to work 7 days a week.
Mrs FD is a surgeon, has no aspiration to do private work, but the way the government keep treating her profession like sh!t makes alternatives look more inviting.
She showed me a job that she was offered in Corporate land. £100k a year 9-5 (relative compared to a doc), less responsibility etc etc. She would never go for it, but it was very demoralising to think that she works much harder for a lot less financial reward.
Then there is moving abroad where you could get a much better work life balance, and get better paid for it.
Quite a few docs are getting fed up of being kicked in the teeth and leaving 🙁
Also that chart ignores costs for some countries, for example in most of Europe our healthcare costs are deducted at source, whereas outside Europe they're usually paid by the individual - so not really apples vs apples.
@convert I haven't been to A&E since getting smacked in the head playing hockey in 1981. I and my immediate family have had a few NHS experiences in the last couple of years on which I base my comments. The NHS was setup to provide healthcare at start and end of life and to do emergency life threatening stuff. At many other things in between the service is really quite poor. This shouldn't surprise anyone as we spend substnatially less on it than our European neighbours do. We can't have a sensible conversation as it immediately descends into "privatise the nhs" rants. No where else in the world does health care as we do, there is a reason for that and its not a positive one for the UK.
EDIT:
As much as we like to think to the contrary, we don't live in a particularly benevolent society and until we do the NHS will never be supported financially as much as we really should want it to be.
As Inre-read your post I think we are agreeing. We don't live in a society which is prepared to pay for the services we want. The average tax payer is of the view they are paying more than they get out and they are very much mistaken
On taxes the top 1% pay 30% of income taxes collected, ie top 1% pay £50bn ie an average of £170,000 a head. Personally I think our spending on health provision ie a new NHS should rise from £130bn to more like £170bn - as you can see by the chart below you can't realistically do that with income taxes as you can't put them up enough. As noted VAT on food is 5% in France and 10% in Germany for example.
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FD, Mrs FD should be able to earn a decent living in the UK and work sensible hours, we need to change our system and mind set to allow it. I have a few relatives who are dentists and doctors (not surgeons) in France, they make £500k plus as a result of their practices (they run businesses with multiple practitioners)
Discussion on NHS is so skewed and emotional here its not possible to have a sensible conversation. So we carry on with the same old theme and the service is getting worse as health costs rise far faster than revenues not least due to an ageing population.
BTW see the Lyme Discease thread
Also that chart ignores costs for some countries, ... so not really apples vs apples.
this gets a bit closer to comparing your Bramleys to your Granny Smiths:
[img] 
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http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/health-care-spending-compared
And this is quite useful too if you want to explore further:
FunkyDunc - if your wife is a surgeon and was offered £100K in the private sector she would very likely be taking a substantial pay cut when comparing her current overall remuneration (Pay, Holidays, Maternity Leave, Employers Pension contribution / value of the defined pension benefit) with that of a different role in the private sector that offers "headline" higher base pay.
As I recall it employees in most private sector roles would need around 40-45% of their salary paid into a pension to get parity with NHS staff and their defined pension benefit.
Although NHS staff sacrifice 10-15% of their salary the employers element is worth more than 25% of salary - compared to an average of 6% in the private sector. To make up the gap a typical private sector worker would need to sacrifice more than 35% of salary to get the same pension.
Also factor in total job security compared to potentially very limited job security - the GMC / RCS find it extremely difficult to remove practising rights from doctors / surgeons with the result even the bad ones continue to be employed by the NHS.
Also agree with Jamba above - we need Doctors / Surgeons to work reasonable hours to ensure they are not over tired and not making mistakes - as is the case with other safety critical professions.
So the debate should actually be - are people on average incomes willing to pay significantly more tax to improve the funding of the NHS?
Alternatively, are the 300000 people who benefit the most from being part of our society prepared to pay an amount of tax which wouldn't impact on their lifestyle, yet would allow the rest of society to live better lives?
Alternatively, are the 300000 people who benefit the most from being part of our society prepared to pay an amount of tax which wouldn't impact on their lifestyle, yet would allow the rest of society to live better lives?
They couldn't pay enough more that anyone would notice. Thats one of my points, if we want the services we claim to want we all need to oay for them. The logic that it "wouldn't impact their lifestyles" is a false one people are very sensitive to the 50% threshold as getting less than half is seen to be grossly unfair. Also in many cases these highly paid people could easily do exactly the same job elsewhere, certainly say Ireland or Switzerland.
@rod yes my pension calcs would be the same, a private sector person would need to pay in approx 50% to try and match the pension and these days maybe even more as tax relief is limited and pension pot is heavily taxed above £1.2m (Jeremy Corbyn's pension is worth £1.6m for example)
maybe even more as tax relief is limited and pension pot is heavily taxed above £1.2m (Jeremy Corbyn's pension is worth £1.6m [b]for example[/b])
What's that an example of?
They couldn't pay enough more that anyone would notice. Thats one of my points
So the top earners in society couldn't pay enough, but the bottom earners could? If you look at the income splits your statement makes no sense.
The logic that it "wouldn't impact their lifestyles" is a false one people are very sensitive to the 50% threshold as getting less than half is seen to be grossly unfair
You mean it's fairer to increase taxes on the people who are getting the bus, rather than someone who might have to choose a 325i rather than a 330i? GTFO 🙂
Jambalaya skipping back a bit what is your idea of a typical lawyer or barrister ? And do you understand the difference between charging out rate and salary ?
Yes I do appreciate that @crankboy. Typical: Employment lawyers, family lawyers for example. Top "magic circle" partner lawyers are £500-£1000 an hour assuming you are not talking about M&A or tax advice as thats much more expensive.
You can make £150k running a local authority, £100k as a head teacher. I would wish surgeons and consultants to be able to make much more than that.
Rich, well everyone in Germany and France manages fo pay more taxes, a lot more. I remember finding a list of the EU countries with VAT on food andnits most of them. Actually your car example makes a good point, by increasing taxes on the rich you reduce their spending and that impacts fhe wider economy, cheaper car means less revenue for car dealership, less profit for manufacturer etc. The top rate of tax/ni went from 41 to 52 (so a 26% increase) and they removed personal allowances. The top 1% pay an average of £170k in tax, the 99% pay £3,300 on average - now these figures don't include NI but they are illustrative. My point is "tax the rich" is more a political battle cry than an effective financial policy.
500k ? A private doctor / surgeon could make multiples of that.
Perhaps because when we have people still dying of hunger and exposure in the UK, it might almost seem immoral to earn that kind of money...
Heard this discussed on R4 today. The doctors rep made the reasonable point that of the amount paid out in overtime the vast majority (from memory 3/4 or more) was covered by the number of salaries the NHS is saving by having large numbers of consultants posts unfilled.
Not to mention the money they save by not having to pay out huge fines for missing A&E waiting times and other quality measures.
Firstly, hospitals are subject to a variety of incentives and penalties- so if you're going to miss out on £2m for the sake of lacking consultant hours (and consultants to provide them) then paying your consultants handsomely for overtime makes perfect sense.
Secondly, NHS hospitals must compete with private hospitals for consultant hours and pay accordingly. These numbers seem on the low side to me, given that spinal consultants locally (in the north east) can make 7 figure salaries and generate multiples more for the private hospitals they work for.
There are also costs that come from working more - mainly professional indemnity insurance, which can be eye wateringly expensive for some specialties, so there's a point where you're not earning, just churning.
Actually your car example makes a good point, by increasing taxes on the rich you reduce their spending
Or perhaps their saving. Poorer people by definition are less likely to save, because they have fewer choices.
You mean it's fairer to increase taxes on the people who are getting the bus, rather than someone who might have to choose a 325i rather than a 330i?
Whilst I'm not normally inclined to defend jambalaya (1. he's more than capable of doing it himself and 2. I don't necessarily agree with him on a lot of things) I think he is making a good point. Get rid of ideas of what is "fairer" as you'll never get agreement on what this actually means. As far as raising tax is concerned what people generally consider fair is when taxes are raised on people who aren't them (see also benefit cuts that they don't receive). If you want to raise taxes to pay for the NHS then look at the best way of getting more money. I'll wager that increasing the basic rate of tax by 1p in the pound would raise more than a 50p top rate of tax.
Whether you consider this fair isn't really the point, the point is how to raise the most cash.
Oh and for reference I chose the 330i.
I'll wager that increasing the basic rate of tax by 1p in the pound would raise more than a 50p top rate of tax.Whether you consider this fair isn't really the point, the point is how to raise the most cash.
But you also have to assess the greater impact on society of those changes, adding 1% to the tax burden of people who probably have no spare income vs those who do.
The real solution is to put it all on the table and look for a way to make tax work. Incentivse people to be in work and paying taxes.
"Incentivse people to be in work and paying taxes."
Welfare cuts.
It would be interesting to know how far down the food chain most people think you should go before you find the first net financial contributor*. I'd like to think that it should be quite a way. You would hope all of us with the ability to make non essential purchases (shiny bikes for example) or put money away for a rainy day are also making a contribution beyond what we are costing over our lifetime.
*appreciate this must be horribly complicated to work out and at best only an average. There are times in your life (when you are a child, when you are an OAP, when you are ill) when you are a huge taker and others when you cost the state very little. There are also some folk who stay healthy and cheap most of their lives and then drop down dead at 55 - the perfect member of the population in terms of 'value for money'.
outofbreath - Member
"Incentivse people to be in work and paying taxes."Welfare cuts.
No, those are your words, making work pay, making sure that by working you don't suddenly end up worse off by say paying another % on income tax.
It would be interesting to know how far down the food chain most people think you should go before you find the first net financial contributor*. I'd like to think that it should be quite a way
It's a lot higher up than you might imagine. Have a look at that Telegraph story I linked to but it's around the £35k mark, based on household income.
making sure that by working you don't suddenly end up worse off by say paying another % on income tax
When considered in isolation the increase in income tax never makes you worse off. The tapering rate of benefits on the other hand might.
It's a lot higher up than you might imagine. Have a look at that Telegraph story I linked to but it's around the £35k mark, based on household income.
I wasn't really interested in where the line is currently but where people think 'morally' should be. At what point do people think they are comfortably enough off to feel that they should be contributing rather than just putting in what they get out. Judging on the recent EU referendum result that concept does seem quite alien to most now sadly.
The break-even point can't be all that far from the average, ok the distribution isn't symmetric and the very rich can pay a decent whack more (as they do) but the vast bulk of people must pay in roughly what they get out.
Though this is of course ignoring the importance of borrowing against future generations, but that is again only a modest amount (per year: it adds up over time).
I wasn't really interested in where the line is currently but where people think 'morally' should be.
I suspect that would be "above what I currently earn".
I wasn't really interested in where the line is currently but where people think 'morally' should be.
Sadly I think you are correct.
The 35k line says more about our low wage economy, the average household income is only 22k.
Most people have never left the recession, austerity has been a crushing disaster
Now pulling the post back from the tangent it went off on, when it seemed no one was at all interested in what I thought the issue was 🙂
This is the kinda issue I could see:
Possible fraud, certainly incompetence and bad management.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36922039
The 35k line says more about our low wage economy, the average household income is only 22k.
22k would be mode not mean wouldnt it? I would imagine the mean wage is much, much higher due to Branson and his mates.
In eonomic stats, average such as average wages are generally arithmetic mean averages
Indeed when people say average most people assume mean but 22k seems too low to be the mean wage. I remember my old style student loan needed paying back when I earned 2/3rds of the nat mean wage and that was around 22k about 15 years ago.
Also the poster seems to be mixing wage with household income which I presume includes those on benefits