A public sector pay crisis is looming as anger over pay deals for nurses and teachers could lead to action.

MPs are lobbying Gordon Brown to overturn a decision to stagger a pay award that has provoked NHS nurses to threaten industrial action for the first time ever.

And a National Union of Teachers' (NUT) poll has revealed that 85 per cent of Bradford members would be prepared to strike if the Government fails to deliver an improved pay deal.

Keighley MP Ann Cryer, Shipley MP Philip Davies, Pudsey MP Paul Truswell and Calder Valley MP Chris McCafferty have criticised the Chancellor's decision to stage this year's 2.5 per cent salary rise, with slices in April and November.

The 1.5 per cent pay rise last month, to be followed by a further one per cent increase in the autumn, works out at 1.9 per cent over the year.

That equates to a £570-a-year pay cut in real terms on an average nurse's wage of £24,841, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

The union is taking the unprecedented step of balloting 300,000 nurses on whether they would be prepared to support industrial action. The Bradford MPs are among 136 to have signed a Parliamentary motion urging the Government to "rethink its decision to stagger the pay rises so that staff receive the full amount to which they should be entitled at the start of the financial year".

Meanwhile, the NUT has made a ten per cent pay claim for teaching staff in England and Wales from 2008.

However, the Government has still to respond to a request from the School Teachers' Review Body to review this year's 2.5 per cent rise. Now, the majority of Bradford NUT members have voiced their support for strike action if a compromise cannot be found.

Ian Murch, NUT Bradford branch secretary, said: "This coming September we are due to get a 2.5 per cent rise and then two per cent for he next three years.

"However, that will remain below the rate of inflation which is rising to 4.5 per cent.

"There is a potential battle with the Government brewing."

Mr Murch, a member of the NUT's national salaries committee which will meet with the School Teachers' Review Body later in the summer to pass on members' views, added the NUT's request for a minimum award of £3,000 rising to ten per cent was unlikely' to be granted.

But he said the Government had to act and improve teachers' pay to ensure the profession remained able to compete for the best graduates.

Mr Murch said a decision from the Government on the pay claim was expected in September.

The NUT has called on the School Teachers' Review Body to ignore the Government's two per cent public sector pay rise target.

Consumer price inflation (CPI) was 2.8 per cent last month and the Retail Prices Index 4.5 per cent.

NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said: "For more than 30 years teaching has faced boom and bust."

With regards to a health service strike, under RCN rules, members cannot take industrial action that is harmful to care.

However, a work to rule may see them refuse to work beyond contracted hours. According to RCN research, nurses work an average of six-and-a-half hours of unpaid overtime every week.

A Department of Health spokesman said it was "maintaining a dialogue" with the RCN to resolve the dispute.