DESPITE being on the brink of announcing a pay award for nurses which is nearly double the rate of inflation - and as high as 11 per cent for newly-qualified ones - Tony Blair is unlikely to inspire a rush of new recruits to work on the beleaguered wards or elsewhere in the public sector when he reveals his outlook on their rewards.

For while the hard-pressed nurses may, next week, be made a special case others, may only get more of the pay restraint they have had for years and, longer term, a shake-up tying increases to efficiency and achievement.

The government may be right to challenge the "sacred cows," as Mr Blair calls them, by scrapping blanket national pay awards for people like doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers and civil servants and replacing them with greater differentials, local deals and more performance-related pay.

But the prime minister is hardly going to make working in the public sector more attractive if workers feel their pay will never match that of the private sector .

Yet that is what he seems to be telling them as he maintains that public service is about more than money and that its employees must realise the rewards of job satisfaction and dedication that come with a slimmer pay packet. The Prime Minister appears to be extolling the virtues of dedication and vocation, which, though they may not be so apparent in public service as they were a generation ago, are still to be found in ample measure in our hospitals, police forces, schools, government offices and town halls.

But such praiseworthy values do not pay the workers' bills.

And if they are not recognised in terms of decent pay and conditions, workers feel exploited and dedication and vocation become badly undermined - as the staff shortage in nursing now suggests.

Mr Blair must strike a balance.

Setting an example by clamping down on the "high-life" perks of ministers and, as reported, keeping a freeze for a third year on salaries in the Cabinet - imagine the political damage of its members getting the 17 per cent rise they are owed while the public sector gets around 2.5 per cent - will help him sell the "dedication" message.

In moving towards linking increases in public sector pay to improved results, the government may be injecting incentives that are long overdue in the many parts of the public sector.

But if it wants to draw on the pride its workers have in the job they do, it will also to have to ensure that it is always a worthwhile alternative to the one in the private sector.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.