One million nurses, doctors and teachers are to receive inflation-busting pay rises when the annual public sector pay settlement is announced on Monday.

The announcement comes amid the continued crisis within the NHS brought on by the winter's flu epidemic.

One of the reasons for the chaos brought on by the severe outbreak of the virus across the UK is the continued shortage of staff.

Ministers will hope a pay rise above inflation, recommended by independent pay review bodies, will help attract staff, not only to the NHS but to other public services such as teaching and social work.

Inflation is currently running at 2.2%, and the government target is 2.5%.

NHS staff including nurses, midwives and physiotherapists are expected to be offered 3.3% extra from April, with some staff getting more. Doctors are expected to get slightly more than 3%.

It is also expected that nurses at the top of their profession would receive bigger increases of about 3.6%, or £1,000 a year.

Staff such as ambulance workers and porters, who are not covered by the pay review bodies, are expected to be offered a similar 3.3% as part of a three-year deal.

In the education sector, teachers in England and Wales will receive between 3% and 3.5%.

Staff who opt to join the new performance-related higher pay scale will be in line for another rise from September, said by ministers to be worth up to £2,000.

A rise of 3% would be worth about £695 to the bulk of teachers, who are on the top of the main classroom teachers' pay scale.

But there have already been calls for the government to fund the pay hikes centrally.

Graham Lane, education chairman of the Local Government Association, has said: "We haven't got the money.

"Anything above 2.5% means bigger classes, because schools won't be able to afford to take on teachers to meet rising pupil numbers."

The NHS Confederation, which represents health authorities, said it would be able to afford pay rises of up to 3.5% - but only just.

Health minister John Denham said staff were the most vital part of the NHS and pointed out that the increase in pay for a certain grade of nurses in last year's pay round attracted a lot of back to NHS.

He said: "The reality is part of providing decent NHS is ensuring we've got the right staff with the right skills to deliver that service.

"We all know that this winter and in many previous winters some part of the service couldn't operate to full capacity because we didn't have the staff to deliver it.

"If we want to have the intensive care beds, if we want to have the general services we must have fair and decent pay awards for our staff so people not only want to join the NHS and they stay with us and have rewarding careers."