Health unions last week rejected a pay offer for non-review body staff that would give them the same deal as nurses and professions allied to medicine - 2 per cent from 1 April and another 1.8 per cent in December.

Staff side secretary Paul Marks said after a meeting of the Whitley Council for administrative and clerical staffs that the offer had not 'formed the basis of an agreement'.

The main sticking point was the phasing of the offer, although there was also concern that it failed to address specific issues, including low pay.

Mr Marks and management side secretary Peter Gibbs have agreed to discuss how the offer might be redistributed to tackle the problem of low pay.

The same pay offer is expected to be made to other non-review body staff covered by the ambulance, ancillary staff and professional and technical staff Whitley Councils. Mr Marks said there was less room for manoeuvre with ancillary staff because differentials for the group were much more narrow.

The offer received a guarded welcome from the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors' Association.

Labour relations director Roger Kline said : 'We are pleased that they are going to offer no less than the award to nurses, midwives and PAMs. But there are a number of other long-standing issues known to the other functional councils which we hope will be addressed.'

The low pay of cytology screeners, which had been acknowledged by chief medical officer Sir Kenneth Calman, was one example now much more urgent given the spate of recent reports of breast and cervical cancer screening disasters.

'We really do hope they are going to take other parts of the claims seriously, ' Mr Kline said.

GMB is to target 100 trusts with equal pay claims on behalf of women ancillary workers because it believes the offer does not address the issue of low pay.

National officer Mike Fisher said: 'There is no indication from the government that they are serious about this issue. They are hiding behind the Low Pay Commission, which was never intended for the public sector.'

The union will be looking for the best male comparator, either within the targeted trust or from other trusts, in an attempt to win equal pay for both part time and full-time women ancillary workers.

Meanwhile, Unison is running a campaign to persuade the government to drop the phasing of the award for nurses and other NHS staff.

Members are sending postcards to prime minister Tony Blair claiming that staff nurses will lose over£5 a week until the full award is paid in December, and that phasing the award will mean that its value will be nearly 1 per cent less than inflation.

Members and branches are lobbying local MPs for staging of the award to be scrapped, in line with the recommendation of the pay review bodies.