A PAY offer of 2.5 per cent for NHS healthcare staff in 2026/27 was branded “insulting and derisory” by unions today.

The below-inflation rise is all the government can afford, ministers claimed in submissions to both the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) and the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB).

Unison head of health Helga Pile said: “Yet again ministers are trying to get away with giving staff a way-below-inflation pay rise.

“This is an insult. It will go down badly right across the NHS, just as workers are bracing themselves for the challenges of winter.

“This is surely the final nail in the coffin for the pay review body process. Ministers must now get unions in for talks and put a decent level of funding on the table.”

Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Three months after we rejected a higher amount, and with inflation rising, the government risks insulting NHS staff all over again. 

“With too many leaving nursing and too few joining, we need urgent and fundamental pay reform, not derisory pay deals that fail to cover living costs.

“The pay review body process has become a sham. Unions are refusing to engage with it, and the government cannot hide behind it. We need direct talks at pace to transform nursing pay and health and care services.”

GMB national officer Sharon Wilde branded the government’s submission as “not good enough,” adding: “Ministers must recognise the PRB is broken. 

“They need to come to the table themselves and deliver the decent pay that NHS workers deserve.”

Responding on behalf of doctors, British Medical Association council chair Dr Tom Dolphin said: “It is frankly indefensible that yet another government is once again suggesting real-terms pay cut for doctors – an increase of less than 50p per hour for many newly-qualified doctors. 

“After more than a decade of pay erosion, spiralling workloads, and an NHS in a state of near chaos, this is a deliberate choice to devalue those who hold the health service together — a profound disregard for our doctors and the state of the profession.”

The Department for Health and Social Care said: “This government has consistently demonstrated its commitment to supporting NHS staff — including accepting the PRB recommendations for above-inflation pay awards across the NHS for two years in a row.”