A government minister has failed to rule out banning doctors from striking, amid its ongoing pay dispute with the British Medical Association.
Health minister Karin Smyth insisted that banning doctors from striking is “not what we want to do”, but admitted it is “always a possibility”.
Doctors in England returned to work on Monday after a six-day strike, which was the fifth round of industrial action by resident doctors since 2023.
Asked whether the government could ban resident doctors from striking in the same way the police are banned from doing so, Ms Smyth told Sky News: “That is not what we want to do. We want to work with them.”
Asked whether she could rule it out, the health minister said: “We don’t want that to happen.”
Pressed on the issue, Ms Smyth added: “Well, in a world that is always a possibility. That is not what we want to do, very firmly. So I’m very firm that we don’t want to do that. We want to work with them.”
It is against the law for police officers to take industrial action under any circumstances, even if in dispute over issues such as pay and conditions of service.
The minister also accused striking doctors of “damaging improvement” to the NHS.
“Doctors strikes are really regrettable and they do cost the service money,” she added.
The BMA has accused the government of going back on an offer made last month to resolve the long-running dispute and is demanding that their pay is restored to 2008 levels under retail price index (RPI) measures of inflation.
But the health secretary has said that meeting the demands of resident doctors and the BMA would cost £3bn a year but could rise to £30bn a year if other health staff were offered the same pay rises.
Wes Streeting argued that if “everyone was demanding the same” then “we would be breaking this country”.
Mr Streeting told reporters on Monday that there was agreement between the government and doctors about many of the issues in the NHS “but there isn’t an acknowledgement from the BMA” that the £300m lost to six days of strike action is money that could have been spent elsewhere.
He added: “I feel like we’ve turned the ship, the boat’s going in the right direction, except some of the crew are trying to row in one direction while the rest of us are going in the other. You can’t make progress that way.
“We are seeing an improving NHS, and we’ve seen improvement despite resident doctors’ strikes, but the fact is, performance would have been better and there would have been more money to invest in staff and services if the BMA hadn’t been undertaking the strike action.
“So there needs to be a bit of compromise and bit of give and take here.”
But Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA resident doctors committee, accused the health secretary of “once again choosing hostile rhetoric in the media and outside of the negotiating room over and above getting round the table and speaking to us directly”.
He added: “We don’t recognise the sums that he is using to cost pay restoration. Nor have we at any point said it would be done all in one go.
“We’re keen to do a deal, and look forward to discussing this with the government as soon as possible.”