Matt Hancock claims the 1% NHS pay proposal is a "real terms pay rise" - despite predictions it will be outstripped by inflation by the time it takes effect.
The Health Secretary told a committee of MPs: "Inflation is below 1%, therefore a proposed 1% rise is indeed a pay rise and that's simply a matter of fact."
But the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - who provide the financial predictions on which the Government plans its Budget - predict inflation will have outstripped the proposal before it even takes effect.
The pay proposal won't even be confirmed until late spring.
And the OBR predict inflation will rise to 1.5% this year - meaning prices will rise by more than NHS pay.
And by next year, the OBR say inflation will be 1.8%.
NHS Long Term Plan documents show the Government had planned on the basis of a 2.1% pay rise for staff from April.
Ministers refused to enact a prompt pay rise and instead delivered a 1% pay suggestion to the NHS Pay Review Body.
The body will now take evidence from other bodies before delivering its recommendation in May. The Government will then make the final decision.
Any multi-year contract pay award will not now come in until at least July - well in to the 2021/22 financial year.
The Consumer Price Index inflation is predicted to increase further to 1.9% in 2023.
Mr Hancock told MPs: “As you know I’m a huge fan of and supporter of the workforce right across the NHS who have done an incredible job during the pandemic, absolutely extraordinary.
“The NHS was carved out of the pay freeze that’s been applied due to the enormous pressure on the public finances, and has been applied to everybody else in the public sector.
“Evidence reflects what is affordable and we will of course will study what the independent body says.”
The cost of raising the wages of the majority of the English NHS workforce by 1% this year would be £750 million, ministers have said.
The pay group under discussion is around one million staff but excludes some doctors, dentists and senior managers.
Mr Hancock claims only the 1% pay plan is “affordable” despite splashing £37 billion on a failing Test and Trace system, run, in part, by private outsourcing firms.
Billions more pounds of taxpayers money is spent on private firms that supply temp staff, rather than the NHS employing them directly.
Independent experts identified 100,000 NHS staffing vacancies in England before the pandemic and now fear a further exodus of traumatised workers.
Mr Hancock was questioned about plans to reform the to give Health Secretary more direct control over the service.
He claimed it was a “judgement call” how many staff the NHS was short and that it would be for ministers to decide how many workers the NHS needed.
He told MPs: “We could have asked an independent expert, and we could have asked five and they would have come out with five different answers.
“Ultimately what you have to do is make a judgment and then you have to deliver against it. And we made a judgment and we’re delivering against it.”This week Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner urged ministers to bring in a “significant real terms” pay increase to help prevent thousands of staff leaving the NHS.
Ms Rayner warned that the pressure on NHS staff would continue even after the pandemic.
“We have an NHS workforce that has literally been in crisis the last 12 months,” she said.
“They’ve really pushed themselves to the limits and it’s not going to stop now.
“Our NHS is going to be working around the clock to deal with the backlog.”
The Labour MP said ministers should agree to a multi-year pay deal for all NHS staff - with no cap on negotiations.
The Royal College of Nursing has called for a 12.5% increase and - unusually - threatened strike action over the issue.
Ms Rayner said the 2.1% budgeted for was a “small amount”, adding: “The honest way of approaching this is not to put a ceiling on it.
“We should go into them with the expectation that there is a significant real terms pay increase for those NHS workers.”
