Government seeks views on limiting strike action by hospital staff

The government is running a public consultation to get views on whether some hospital NHS staff should be legally obliged to provide a minimum level of care during industrial action.
The consultation was launched on 22 September, the last day of the most recent joint strike by junior doctors and consultants. It came days before new figures published on 25 September showed more than one million patient appointments or operations have been affected by the unresolved pay dispute between government and NHS staff since mid-December 2022.
The consultation closes on 14 November, and a previous similar exercise on minimum service levels for ambulance trusts, which ended in May, has not yet been reported on. Current planned strike action is therefore unlikely to be affected by any new regulations.
In its plans, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said minimum levels were needed to overcome the current situation of voluntary derogations that relied on the goodwill of NHS staff and unions to exempt certain workers from striking to provide ‘life and limb’ saving patient care. The DHSC said:
the British Medical Association refused 17 derogation applications during the strike by junior doctors last month;
22 NHS critical incidents had been declared due to recent industrial action, two of which involved critical care patients and gynaecology patients being moved to other hospitals;
some urgent cancer surgery and chemotherapy appointments had to be rescheduled and some urgent surgery on trauma patients could not go ahead; and
minor injury units, urgent treatment centres and one A&E department had had to close.
The British Medical Association (BMA) criticised the DHSC’s plans, saying it had always been clear that any strike action should preserve minimum levels of staffing to ensure patient safety. The recent joint action by consultants and junior doctors didn’t constitute a ‘full walk out’ and the BMA had ‘been clear that we are not planning to do so, with urgent and emergency care continuing to run’, the union said.
Under its proposals, the DHSC said some NHS staff would be required to work on strike days to ensure the same level of care as on a non-strike day for:
in-patients already receiving hospital care
patients needing urgent elective treatment, dialysis, transplants, elective caesareans or inductions of labour
patients needing emergency, critical or urgent assessments, diagnostics or treatment (e.g. cancer or cardiac diagnostics)
unplanned emergencies or women presenting to A&E in active labour.
Minimum service levels wouldn’t apply to planned care like routine hip or knee operations or outpatient appointments. Nor would they apply to community health services, GP surgeries or pharmacies.
People can respond to the DHSC consultation online.