UNIONS representing more than a million NHS workers delivered an ultimatum to the government today: award a pay increase in line with inflation or be responsible for a winter of disputes across the health service.

Fourteen unions representing NHS staff including nurses and midwives met Health Secretary Steve Barclay over the staffing crisis as the TUC also warned that nurses face a £1,500 a year real-terms pay cut if the government imposes its proposed 2 per cent pay increase on the workforce.

The unions said that without the pay increase and investment in the NHS, staff would continue to quit in their thousands, treatment waiting times would lengthen and the “desperate staffing situation” will become “significantly worse.”

The NHS has 132,000 vacancies, including 47,000 nurses’ jobs.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents 300,000 nurses, have voted for strike action over pay and other unions are balloting their members.

RCN director of employment relations and legal services Jo Galbraith-Marten said after the Westminster meeting: “No nurse ever wants to strike, but we have been forced into this situation because low pay and workforce shortages are pushing nursing staff out of the profession and making care increasingly unsafe.”

Royal College of Midwives director for employment relations Alice Sorby said: “Our members do not take industrial action lightly.”

She said a “proper way award” was “central” to retaining staff. 

Unison head of health and chairwoman of the NHS unions Sara Gorton said: “There can be no solution to the damaging workforce crisis unless the government improves NHS pay. 

“Without the staff to provide essential care, patients face excessive and lengthening waits to be seen. 

“Ministers must give the NHS urgent help and provide the cash for another wage rise. 

“The alternative is multiple disputes in what could be the worst winter on record for the NHS. No-one wants that.” 

Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe said that NHS workers “can’t carry on like this” and the union “is determined to win a better deal for our members.”

GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison said: “It’s not rocket science. Give NHS workers a proper pay rise, that means they don’t have to use food banks or quit the service in droves.”

Mr Barclay said: “We discussed ways we can work together to make the NHS a better place to work” following the talks.