Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to prepare for resident doctor strikes since July 2024.

The National Health Service makes every effort through rigorous contingency planning to minimise disruption as a result of industrial action and its impact on patients and the public.

Resident doctors in England went on strike for five days from Friday 25 July to Wednesday 30 July 2025. To prepare, NHS England analysed previous strike data to assess financial, operational, and patient impacts.

In response to this assessment, NHS England worked hard to ensure that resources were prioritised to protect all patients using its services during the period of strike action, in particular emergency treatment, critical care, neonatal care, maternity, and trauma, and to ensure we prioritised patients who have waited the longest for elective care and cancer surgery.

NHS England will continue to iterate its approach based on the most recent industrial action to ensure the NHS continues to deliver for patients.