A senior Tory MP has told the Health Secretary to meet nursing leaders to try to prevent mass walkouts this week.
Health Committee Chairman Steve Brine broke ranks to urge the Government to get round the table with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) ahead of the first of its planned strikes on Thursday.
Mr Brine, a former Health Minister, said patients and the public were being left "bemused" by the bitter war between ministers and the unions over industrial action.
Today, RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen offered to call off strikes “right now, this very minute” if ministers were prepared to enter pay talks.
But Health Secretary Steve Barclay rebuffed the offer and suggested nurses asking for decent pay would take money away from clearing the post-Covid backlog in the NHS backlog.
An emergency Cobra meeting has been called this afternoon ahead of walkouts by nurses, paramedics, posties, rail staff and border force officials in the run-up to Christmas.
No10 confirmed that a formal request for military support has been made, which means soldiers will be drafted in to drive ambulances during industrial action next week.
Union leaders have criticised the Government for turning up the temperature by announcing plans to bring in the army to help mitigate disruption - rather than holding talks.
Mr Brine urged the Health Secretary to get involved in the talks to prevent the disruption.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I started by saying it was 1-0 to the RCN with the move they made yesterday.
"I would suggest that the Secretary of State could get to 1-1 by inviting them in and actually I'm not sure that he's got an awful lot to lose.
"You know, draw-draw better than war-war, and at the moment we're in a media war-war and the patients, the public who pay for this service are just sort of left bemused in the middle."
About the RCN's offer to suspend the strike in return for pay talks, Mr Brine said: "I'm not so sure that it was so much of an olive branch as it was 1-0 in what is becoming a negotiation via the media."
"I suspect that there are more conversations going on than we know, probably at a junior level than they would like."
Keir Starmer blasted the Tories for showing a "profound lack of leadership" but he suggested that the nurses' demand for 5% above inflation pay hikes was "probably more than can be afforded".
He told LBC: "Nobody wants to see these strikes go ahead, including those who are going on strike.
"If you think about the nurses, the last thing they want to do is to go on strike, and they haven't been on strike ever before."
He said it was "bizarre" that ministers would not negotiate with nurses on pay in a last-ditch effort to call off the strike.
"For the Government to sit this out with two or three days to go, I think shows a profound lack of leadership, we need the Government to get around the table."
But he added: "I do accept that what they are asking for is probably more than can be afforded."
Mr Barclay took a bullish stance this morning, saying that giving nurses a pay rise would mean taking money away from funding for operations.
Asked on BBC Breakfast if it was time to sit down with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and "talk money", he said: "We have engaged with them and we continue to be willing to do so."
But he rejected the idea of discussing pay, saying: "We do have an independent pay review body and it's important both sides respect that independent body".
He said seven million people are waiting for an operation, adding: "I don't want to be taking money away from clearing the... backlog, which is what we would have to do, we'd have to take money away from patients waiting for operations to then fund additional pay.
"And if everyone on the public sector were to get an increase in line with inflation, that would be costing £28 billion at a time when the Government has to get inflation under control, because that is the biggest factor in terms of people's cost of living."
It comes as Transport Secretary Mark Harper claimed that families would be forced into having a virtual Christmas due to rail strikes.
Industrial action will take place on 13, 14, 16 and 17 December and on 3, 4, 6 and 7 January.
“This year, many families may have no choice but to alter their plans and have a virtual Christmas again,” he wrote in the Telegraph.
“This isn’t due to a new public health pandemic, but because of rail strikes, planned by the RMT union to cause misery during the festive period.”
