Andrea Jenkyns – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrea Jenkyns on 2016-09-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on patient care of junior doctors taking five days of strike action per month until the end of 2016.

Mr Philip Dunne

We were encouraged by the British Medical Association’s (BMA) announcement that it is suspending the rolling programme of five continuous days of industrial action from October to December, which it had previously announced and which would have removed urgent and emergency care from some of our most vulnerable patients.

We have urged the BMA to remove all threat of further industrial action so we can work constructively with junior doctors to address their wider concerns and better recognise their vital importance to the National Health Service.

Prior to the BMA’s announcement, NHS England, working with NHS organisations, had assessed the impact of the industrial action on cancelled operations and outpatient services and had developed plans to mitigate the impact of the industrial action.

Had the BMA continued with their proposed industrial action, based on the levels of disruption during the previous two day all out strike, an initial estimate was that around 25,000 operations and 250,000 outpatient appointments would be cancelled during each five day strike period.