Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of covering junior doctors' shifts with consultants during the junior doctors’ strike between 13 and 18 July 2023.

It is not possible to accurately estimate the costs of industrial action, in particular any action due to take place in future. Numbers of absent staff and rescheduled activity on previous strike days have been reported by NHS providers and are published on the NHS England website. We expect there to be a salary saving on strike days, but this will be outweighed by the costs in covering the shifts for those absent staff. It is not possible to know the exact costs of this cover, as it will be impacted by several factors and local circumstances, including the staff used to cover additional shifts and their pay rates. In addition to this, there will be further costs in catching up rescheduled activity and potential productivity losses on which information may only emerge over time. Given this uncertainty and the ongoing impact of industrial action, any estimate of costs for future strike action would be speculative.