Government Hopes Unions Will Be Less "Militant" As It Braces For Wider NHS Strikes
NHS consultants carried out their first strike in over a decade in 2023 (Alamy)
5 min read
The government is reluctant to get its hopes up that it can avoid further strikes among senior doctors and nurses, as the threat of wider industrial action across the NHS looms.
Up to 50,000 resident doctors in England are expected to take part in five days of industrial action from 7am on Friday to 7am next Wednesday, 30 July.
A government source told PoliticsHome that Health Secretary Wes Streeting was trying to work with all the groups of healthcare workers – including nurses and senior doctors – on other negotiations outside of pay, including measures to improve staff support, development and working conditions, to avoid further strikes.
“We value them, and we want to work with them,” they said.
"We really value all of the NHS workforce, and we want to make things better for them, but we are starting from a really difficult point. And one of the first things that we did was get around the table and sort out our pay deals."
Resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – had been awarded a 5.4 per cent average pay rise for 2025–26, following a 22 per cent pay increase over the previous two years. However, the British Medical Association (BMA) doctors’ union is demanding a 29 per cent rise to restore pay to 2008 levels in real terms.
The BMA has now opened indicative ballots to allow consultant doctors and SAS (specialist) doctors to vote on whether they also want to carry out strike action. The most recent pay offer for consultants, SAS doctors, GPs and dentists, was a 4 per cent consolidated pay rise backdated to 1 April 2025.
Last week, the Royal College of Nursing warned that it would not tolerate doctors getting a bigger pay award. A ballot of 345,000 union members is currently in progress to determine whether the union should accept the proposed pay rise of 3.6 per cent for nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, meaning further strikes are not off the table.
Similar ballots have been carried out by Unite in England and Wales to assess whether other NHS workers, including ambulance, nursing, and support staff, would be prepared to take strike action.
Some in government circles are hopeful that these other groups will not go as far as the resident doctors.
Another source close to Streeting told PoliticsHome they expected the consultants and SAS doctors to be more "circumspect" than resident doctors.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the BMA had shown "disdain" for patients (Alamy)
They suggested that the nurses’ union "understands the purpose of a union" better than the BMA and is likely to be more "reasonable".
"They [the RCN] understand strikes are a last resort, not a first resort,” they said.
However, a backbench Labour MP with a background working in the NHS was more sceptical of the RCN’s willingness to engage with the government in good faith.
“The RCN has become increasingly militant,” they told PoliticsHome. "I think they have now overshot a bit."
They added, however, that many consultants were "angry" with their resident doctors over the strike action planned for this Friday, suggesting that they might be reluctant to go down the same route.
Streeting has also expressed his frustration with the BMA’s decision to continue with the resident doctors' strike, saying it showed “complete disdain for patients and the wider recovery of the NHS”.
A government source admitted to PoliticsHome that during negotiations with the union, ministers were hopeful that there was some chance of persuading the BMA to call off the strikes.
“We were talking about stuff that we could have worked on together, like tackling costs of mandatory exams, taking on some of the additional burden of rotations,” they said.
“Their leadership led us to believe that there was something that we could work with."
BMA resident doctors committee co-chairs Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt 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.
"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."
The government source described the BMA’s public statements as “surprising and different” to the talks which had taken place behind closed doors between the government and the union.
There is a real risk that the strikes could lead to the government missing its waiting list target, according to health experts. Further strikes among other groups of NHS workers could create an even bigger headache for the health secretary.
Independent MP Rachael Maskell, who had the Labour whip suspended last week due to her role in organising a rebellion against the government's welfare reforms, said that the potential impact on NHS waiting lists "shows how fragile things are".
"We do not yet have the staff in place to make the NHS resilient that it can withstand pressures like industrial action," she said.
The government will spend the next couple of days looking at how it can "do things differently" to ensure patient safety during the strikes.
In previous strikes, elective care and procedures were largely rescheduled or cancelled. This time, the government plans to continue with scheduled non-urgent care – a decision that the BMA has criticised, arguing it “stretches safe staffing far too thinly”.
