Revealed: cabinet split over NHS pay disputes piles pressure on Sunak

Health secretary Steve Barclay urges unions to lobby PM over improved pay offer for striking nurses and ambulance workers

The health and social care secretary Steve Barclay has privately urged trade unions to help him make the case to the Treasury and No 10 for extra money for nurses, ambulance workers and other NHS staff in an extraordinary twist to the escalating crisis over health service strikes, the Observer can reveal.

A serious cabinet split has opened up, with Barclay now wanting more money for all NHS staff except doctors - while Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are refusing to budge from their insistence that no more can be offered.