Vital health services face being cut after strikes and NHS restructuring left a £1.3billion black hole.
Sir Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of NHS England, told the Commons Health and Social Care Committee that the £300million bill from July’s junior doctor walkout alone would be “beyond our ability to cope with” if the NHS had to absorb it - warning it “would have consequences on what we’re able to provide.”
The funding row comes on top of a second crisis, with the Government’s order to slash Integrated Care Board (ICB) - NHS bodies which plan services and manage budgets - running costs by half.
Exit packages for thousands of staff are expected to cost around £1billion, but there is no promised “central pot” to pay for them.
Vital health services face being cut after strikes and NHS restructuring left a £1.3billion black hole
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Sir Jim also admitted that the £1billion redundancy bill has no guaranteed central funding.
“We never said there was a central pot of money. We said right at the beginning that we’re going to open a discussion to try and secure central funding,” he told MPs.
Gregory Stafford, Conservative MP for Farnham and Bordon, will write to Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Sir Jim warning patients will suffer if frontline budgets are raided to pay for strikes and restructuring.
He told GB News: “Patients will be harmed as a result. It would be abhorrent and an absolute disgrace and this would be letting down more people who are likely to be old and vulnerable.
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"I will be writing to Jim Mackey and the Health Secretary this week on these matters… I will also be tabling Parliamentary questions.”
He added: “This is a significant concern to all local areas and it is clear the NHS has a significant productivity problem and we need to sort out this.
"These strikes are entirely of the government’s own making and they should not have given a 22 per cent pay rise without asking doctors to become more productive.”
Several ICBs have already stalled consultations while they wait for Treasury clarity, with local leaders warning patient budgets could be raided if redundancy costs are dumped on them.
Experts say strike action is a hammer blow to NHS recovery. NHS England data shows 54,095 appointments were rescheduled in the July 2025 walkout alone, adding to at least 1.7million cancelled since 2022.
A report last month by The King’s Fund said the cost of NHS strikes are far bigger than the headline numbers suggest.
In 2023/24 alone, ministers had to hand over £1.7billion in extra cash to help cover industrial action. But the think-tank warned that’s only part of the picture.
Behind the scenes, trusts face hidden bills - like paying staff who cancelled leave to cover strikes, creating a growing holiday pay debt that will need settling later.
Even when walkouts end, the backlog adds to the pressure, the report states.
Cancelled operations and appointments have to be caught up with costly evening and weekend clinics, piling more strain onto already overstretched services.
The King’s Fund report also states strikes also drain leadership time, with bosses forced to firefight and manage disruption instead of planning improvements.