Almost 200,000 hospital appointments and procedures in England were cancelled during last week’s junior doctors’ strikes, it has been revealed.
There were 20,000 more appointments cancelled in the strikes that ran between 11 and 15 April than in the shorter strike in March, NHS England figures show. A total of 27,361 staff were not at work during the peak of the strikes, though the true figure could be higher as some workforce data was incomplete.
The NHS’s national medical director, Prof Sir Stephen Powis, said the figures showed the “colossal impact of industrial action on planned care in the NHS”, with nearly half a million appointments rescheduled over the last five months.
He said every postponed appointment had “an impact on the lives of individuals and their families and creates further pressure on services and on a tired workforce – and this is likely to be an underestimate of the impact as some areas provisionally avoided scheduling appointments for these strike days”.
While the 195,000 total is lower than the “up to 350,000” potential cancellations that NHS Confederation had feared, hospitals are struggling to cope with the twin pressures of strikes and overstretched services.
Nurses are gearing up to strike again on 30 April after members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) narrowly rejected a “final” pay deal, and they have said industrial action could continue until Christmas, while not ruling out joining forces with junior doctors in future.
The RCN has said it is campaigning to rectify “years of real-terms pay cuts that are pushing people out of the nursing profession and putting patient safety at risk”.
It came as Unite announced plans for a new strike by health workers. Members of the union in England are still being balloted on an offer of a 5% increase this year and a cash sum for last year. Unite put ministers’ offer of 5% increase for 2023-24 to the ballot of its members without a recommendation to accept, saying it did not come anywhere near to matching inflation.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said: “All along we have said this offer is nowhere near good enough for NHS workers. If the new wave of strike action is to be avoided, the government needs to return to the negotiations and put more money on the table. Otherwise, make no mistake, Unite is organising for more decisive strike action involving more and more of our members.”
Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, apologised for the disruption, adding: “These millions of patients are not in this position because of strikes though. Persistent under-resourcing of the health service and under-valuing staff – exacerbated by a pandemic – mean we simply don’t have the workforce and capacity to provide the high-quality and timely care that patients need and deserve.”
Matthew Taylor, the NHS Confederation chief executive, said: “This strike action is going on much longer than expected and will have long-term consequences for patients.”
He said the NHS prepared extensively and coped relatively well, with good levels of cover provided by consultants, SAS doctors and other healthcare professionals, but he added that NHS leaders remained greatly concerned by the prospect of more strikes.
These would “inevitably harm our efforts to reduce waiting lists” that had built up over the pandemic, he said, and he urged union leaders to set out strike derogations to ensure patient safety, or else risk that “the impact of any disruption could be far worse than what we have already seen”.
Noting that the health system is about to enter its sixth month of industrial action, Sir Julian Hartley, the NHS Providers chief executive, said: “The huge number of rescheduled operations and appointments will keep climbing unless the government sits down with unions to find a way to prevent any more strikes.”
Before the figures’ publication, the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, asked Steve Barclay in an urgent question in the Commons how he would prevent further disruption to the health service.
Barclay, the health secretary, told MPs that the government would not budge until all the health unions had completed their ballots and voted on the current pay offer, which would see a 5% increase for nurses.
Barclay said he considered it regrettable that junior doctors had chosen to strike after Easter to cause “maximum disruption”, that the duration had been extended to 96 hours, and that members had been told not to inform hospital bosses about their intention to strike, making contingency planning more difficult.
He said he wanted a deal that increased junior doctors’ pay and addressed other frustrations, but this would require “meaningful movement” from the junior doctors committee co-chairs on the 35% increase, which he claimed was not affordable nor supported by Labour.
Calling Barclay the “invisible man” for his low profile during last week’s strikes, and noting that Rishi Sunak was reluctant to be drawn in, Streeting said there had been an “abdication of leadership during a national crisis”.
He urged Barclay to “swallow his pride and admit he’s failed”, and to reprise talks with junior doctors, bringing in the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) to mediate the discussions.
The prime minister admitted on Monday that the wave of new industrial action would make it more challenging to hit targets he had set on NHS waiting lists as part of his five key priorities.
Last week, the NHS Confederation said any further industrial action would make it “almost impossible” for the health service to ensure no patient is waiting longer than 18 months for treatment.
