Wes Streeting has told hospital leaders “we have your backs” ahead of a five-day strike by resident doctors, according to a report.
The public are being urged to keep coming forward for NHS care during the walkout, set to begin on Friday,
NHS England said hospitals and local teams have been preparing before the strike, which begins at 7am on Friday, and have plans in place to “minimise disruption to patient care and ensure life-saving care continues”.
Thousands of resident doctors are expected to join the strike, which is the 12th by resident doctors since March 2023.
According to the Times newspaper, the Health Secretary told hospital leaders in a call on Wednesday that “we have your backs” if they need to make decisions on staffing, while new NHS England boss Sir Jim Mackey said the service would be “much more resistant” to the demands of the British Medical Association (BMA).
“We and you make decisions about safety, not the BMA. Do what you do best, make sensible decisions and we’ll stick together,” Sir Jim is reported to have said.
It comes as Sir Jim has urged hospital leaders to keep routine operations and appointments going if possible and to only cancel if there is a risk to patient safety.
During the strike, GP surgeries will open as usual and urgent care and A&E will continue to be available for those who need them, NHS England said.
It urged the public to use 111 online as the first port of call for urgent but not life-threatening issues.
Professor Meghana Pandit, NHS England national medical director, said: “There is no doubt this industrial action will take a toll on patients and NHS staff, and it is disappointing it is going ahead.
“While it will mean some appointments won’t be able to go ahead as planned, we are doing all we can to limit this, and patients should continue to use NHS services in the usual way.
“The public should dial 999 in an emergency, and otherwise use 111 online, your local pharmacist or GP, and patients should attend NHS appointments unless told otherwise.”
The BMA has said NHS England’s plan to carry on with business as usual poses a risk to patients.
BMA council chairman Dr Tom Dolphin said: “It’s worrying that NHS England appears intent on telling hospitals to continue providing non-urgent planned care on strike days, despite our warnings that this will leave staffing levels unsafe across the board.
“At best this will leave hospital managers and senior doctors confused over what they should be planning for this week, resulting in last-minute cancellations, and at worst puts patients at risk in both emergency and planned care settings.
“Senior doctors cannot simultaneously cover for striking resident doctors in emergency departments, while also continuing routine work, and NHS England is being irresponsible by suggesting they can do both.
“The priority on strike days must be emergency and urgent care.”
Strikes by resident doctors last June led to 61,989 inpatient and outpatient appointments being rescheduled.
Since the end of 2022, almost 1.5 million appointments have been rescheduled as a result of industrial action.
The BMA said on Tuesday that talks with the Government aimed at averting the strike had collapsed over the core issue of pay.
Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said in a statement: “We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the Government.
“We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today.
“Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges.
“While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors’ finances we have always been upfront that this is at its core a pay dispute.”
Mr Streeting said “we cannot move on pay after a 28.9% pay rise”, but added that the Government was looking at ways to improve resident doctors’ working lives.
He said there was an opportunity for the union “to work with us on a range of options that would have made a real difference to resident doctors’ working conditions and created extra roles to deal with the bottlenecks that hold back their career progression.
“Instead, they have recklessly and needlessly opted for strike action.”
He added: “All of my attention will be now on averting harm to patients and supporting NHS staff at work.
“After a 28.9% pay hike in the last three years and the highest pay rise in the public sector two years in a row, strike action is completely unjustified, completely unprecedented in the history of British trade unionism and shows a complete disdain for patients and the wider recovery of the NHS.“
It came after research suggested public support for the strike is waning.
A YouGov poll showed about half (52%) of people in the UK “somewhat oppose” (20%) or “strongly oppose” (32%) resident doctors going on strike over pay.
A third (34%) of the 4,954 adults surveyed either “somewhat support” (23%) or “strongly support” (11%) doctor strikes.
YouGov said the proportion supporting the strike over pay has dropped five points since it last asked the question in May, when 48% opposed the strikes and 39% supported them.
Resident doctors are qualified doctors in clinical training.
They have completed a medical degree and can have up to nine years of working experience as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to five years of working and gaining experience to become a GP.
