Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will ban strikes by all NHS doctors if they return to power.
The Tory leader said her party would introduce legislation for minimum service levels and block doctors taking widespread industrial action, placing them under the same restrictions that apply to police officers and soldiers.
Thousands of resident doctors, formerly junior doctors, began a five-day strike on Friday after the government and British Medical Association (BMA) failed to reach an agreement over pay.
The previous government passed a law requiring minimum service levels in certain sectors, including some health services, but only ever got as far as considering it for doctors.
In the UK, the only people legally prohibited from going on strike are members of the police force and non-civilian members of the armed forces. Doctors have the same right to strike as any other employee in the public or private sector.
The BMA says that despite a 5.4% average pay rise this year, following a 22% increase over the previous two years, pay is still down by a fifth since 2008 once inflation is taken into account.
A pay uplift of 26% is needed to reverse real-term wage decline, the union says.
But announcing her policy on Sunday, Badeonch accused the union of becoming “more and more militant”, adding that the pay rise resident doctors had already received was “well above anything that any other group has had”.
“Doctors do incredibly important work. Medicine is a vocation, not just a job. That is why in government we offered a fair deal that supported doctors, but protected taxpayers too,” she said.
“That is why Conservatives are stepping in, and setting out common sense proposals to protect patients, and the public finances.
“We are making an offer in the national interest – we will work with the government to face down the BMA to help protect patients and the NHS.”
Ahead of the beginning of strike action, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government would “not let the BMA hold the country to ransom” and insisted that disruption in the NHS would be kept to a minimum.
NHS England had ordered hospitals to only cancel non-urgent work in exceptional circumstances. No official figures have been released yet on the impact of the latest strike. Some hospitals are reporting more than 80% of non-urgent work is still being done with senior doctors covering for resident doctors.
But several patients have told the operations which had been scheduled during and around the strike period had been cancelled or postponed.
The Conservative party claims that its proposed changes would bring the UK in line with other nations across the world, such as Australia and Canada – which have much tighter restrictions on industrial action.
European nations such as Greece, Italy and Portugal also have laws ensuring minimum service levels are in place across their health services.
The has approached Labour and the BMA for comment on Badenoch’s proposals.
