HEALTH workers lobbied Scrooge Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday to take a leaf out of Dickens’s famous book and agree a 13 pence-an-hour rise for all NHS staff.

Members of unions waging a long-running battle for pay justice delivered a Christmas card to Downing Street to demand that the miserly millionaire PM and his Health Secretary sidekick Jeremy Hunt end their cruel wage freeze.

Unite the union head of health Rachel Maskell said: “All NHS staff want for Christmas is the 1 per cent pay rise recommended by the independent pay review body.

“Instead they face another holiday season worrying about how to pay the bills and put food on the table.”

But health workers hold out little hope for an unprompted change of heart from the modern-day Ebenezer Scrooges.

Trade unions instead plan to ramp up industrial pressure with strikes planned for January 29 and February 25.

“Unless Jeremy Hunt urgently establishes proper pay talks for the nation’s nurses, therapists, scientists and support staff, the threat of even more industrial action will loom large right up to the general election,” said Ms Maskell.

Other unions represented at the event were GMB, Unison, the Royal College of Nurses and the Society of Radiographers.