Why it's hard to get the real facts on the junior doctors' row

Well, well - the junior doctors' row. Rarely has a fact check exercise been so tricky. Independent analysts don't want to analyse independently, learned academics don't want to be learned on TV.

"It's all too political," they said as I phoned my way round Britain's health industry today.

Video report by ITV News national editor Allegra Stratton:

First of all, some observations about this saga.

The Health Secretary kicked things off with a politically unwise move. He picked a fight on stats with a group of people in this country not to pick a stats fight with - brainy junior doctors.

He said that in Britain there were 11,000 excess deaths at weekends and appeared to suggest they were preventable, when the research itself had warned him off making that link (saying they were avoidable would be "rash and misleading").

Cue junior doctors going for the jugular, and a thoroughly embarrassing episode all round.

That misstep at the beginning has cost him, perhaps galvanising a generation of doctors against him and setting an unhelpful tone.

But, in Jeremy Hunt's defence, that research DID find a link.

I have spoken to a lot of experts. There IS a weekend effect.

The research showing the weekend effect said: "There are challenging questions about reduced service provision at weekends". Experts believe some - not all - of those deaths can be prevented if there are more resources at a weekend.

"It is possible to remove a weekend effect" one told me.

So there is work to be done beefing up care at the weekend - anyone who has been into A&E recently knows you need to wait until Monday for some important tests.

(I should add, whenever I've had to go in to my local University College Hospital London with my toddler, not often by any stretch, he has had tests on a weekend. I am, however, usually too worried and sleep deprived to have accurate recall).

Junior doctors already work weekends. A lot. They say they have no choice because of staff shortages. Are they the sticking point in making the NHS seven-day? Clearly not on their own.

An official survey of Trusts felt they needed three times the number of personnel in over the weekend - not just junior doctors but in particular senior consultants, bloods and diagnostics too.

Hunt does believe this, but I think his second misstep may have been not to make loud and clear that while he wants to change their working patterns, he isn't singling junior doctors out.

He is negotiating with senior doctors too - it's just, I think, because they are already well paid, maybe they prefer a lower profile.

But from here on in I think Hunt should be given a little credit.

He didn't want to concede any ground on Saturdays at all. He truly believes lots of people work Saturdays at normal pay, and making that happen in the NHS too will mean bosses can afford to rota on more doctors.

Over time, he has been persuaded to compromise. So those who work more than one in four Saturdays a month - often in A&E - will now get a pay premium. That's nearly half of all Britain's junior doctors.

The BMA isn't budging. Perhaps because there is analysis - and whether it is fair or not, I can't get to the bottom of - doing the rounds showing the new offer is a pay cut.

Hunt's official negotiator has told him there isn't a deal to be done. The contracts will be imposed and in some ways, it's game over.

A lot rests on the government's commitment to recruit more doctors to plug rota gaps. Because if you are moving to a seven-day NHS but not increasing the personnel, then your existing workforce is going to be stretched.

More doctors means fewer have to work over time, in theory. It will take years to see whether the new generations of doctors are really coming through. Hunt's critics insist the evidence is that they are already emigrating big time.

Jeremy Hunt does have support for his aim to make a truly seven-day health service, and if he brings it about, it will be quite a legacy.

But with funding and personnel so tight, right now nobody knows how many of Britain's junior doctors will hang around to help him.

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