Jeremy Hunt must find a way out of the junior doctors crisis

The Health Secretary should do whatever it takes to avert this week’s 48-hour walkout by junior doctors – even if it means eating humble pie

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health (Micha Theiner)

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s months-long war of nerves with the medical profession over new NHS contracts is about to reach its climax this week, as junior doctors prepare for a 48-hour walkout on Tuesday – their first strike to include emergency care.

Without thousands of operations facing long delays and a possible meltdown in A&E departments all over Britain, this is a pistols-at-drawn scenario in which one side or the other has to blink. Unfortunately for Mr Hunt, there is no sign that the doctors will blink first.

It would be humiliating for him – and for the Government, which has so far backed him to the hilt – to grasp the lifeline being thrown his way by a cross-party group of MPs, who have called for the contracts to be trialled before being rolled out nationally. The fact that Mr Hunt's opposite number, Labour's Heidi Alexander, has organised this letter no doubt also raises questions in the Health Secretary’s mind about the sincerity of this offer of help.

Even so, the Government blundered in rushing to dismiss the letter as an act of political opportunism. Mr Hunt would be making an even worse error if he clung to his current course, hoping that, if push comes to shove and A&E departments collapse in chaos, public opinion will – finally – turn against the junior doctors.

Even if the shine does come off the doctors’ public image, the collateral damage of this week’s strike in terms of delayed operations, and possibly lost lives, is a price that no government should consider worth paying. Mr Hunt may believe the offer contained in the MPs’ letter is more of a nettle than an olive branch, but he should grasp it all the same.