The wrong cuts

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[/audioplayer]It has long been rumoured that when Jeremy Hunt took over as Health Secretary, Cameron told him to do one thing with the NHS: keep it out of the headlines. Given that the NHS is an enormous institution, the public take an avid interest in it and it is frequently rocked by scandals and financial difficulties, this was no easy task. Until a few weeks ago, Hunt had managed it with aplomb. And then the junior doctor fiasco happened. It has been cataclysmic, one of the worst public relations disasters to rock a government department for years, and it shows no signs of abating. In fact, it’s likely that things will escalate even further when the results of the BMA ballot on industrial action is announced next week — junior doctors seem certain to vote to strike.

This would be an incredibly high-risk strategy for the medical profession and has the potential to be hugely self-sabotaging. At the moment, junior doctors have tremendous public support. But it could take only one needless, tragic death while they were on strike for the support they currently enjoy to crumble. Given the nature of the work doctors do, this is a very plausible outcome. No matter that a skeleton service would continue, with cover by consultants; the sheer number of junior doctors and their vital role in keeping the NHS afloat would inevitably mean that patients will suffer.

There is not a single junior doctor who wants to strike if there is another way out of this mess, and certainly none of them want to cause any harm to their patients. But they feel desperate. They are having ludicrous terms enforced that no worker would tolerate. Hunt’s much-publicised offer of a ‘pay rise’ of 11 per cent was in fact a masterclass in political spin and manipulation.