Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help prevent industrial action in the NHS.

In May, we accepted the independent pay review bodies’ headline pay recommendations, giving doctors and Agenda for Change staff, including nurses, an above inflation pay rise for the second year in a row.

As well as awarding resident doctors in England a pay rise of 28.9% over the last three years, we have listened to their concerns about the state of their training and employment for resident doctors and made proposals to tackle this. We have been clear that we cannot go further on pay but we remain committed to finding a way to end their dispute.

We continue to work in partnership with stakeholders, including trade unions and employers, to implement a suite of non-pay measures to improve working conditions such as tackling violence against National Health Service staff, improving career progression for nurses, and improving the process for exception reporting for resident doctors.

Our 10 Year Workforce Plan will set out how we will deliver change by making sure that staff are better treated, have better training, and more fulfilling roles.