1. "Now it is quite true that neither the Government nor BMA anticipated how much GPs would do in response to performance–related pay.î Dr Barbara Hakin, chair of the NHS employers‘ GP negotiating team, said she would seriously consider the idea of an upper pay limit for next year as early as next week.

2. "We need to compete with the better pay and perks in the private sector." A spokesman for the FDA, which represents senior officials and which last week lashed out at the "cowardly" way ministers have blamed the civil service for policy failures, said: "This artificial pay limit could alienate the senior managers leading public sector reform.

3. Prospect‘s general secretary, Paul Noon, said the ruling would have "enormous implications not just across the public service, but for any employer whose pay or benefits system unreasonably rewards length of time in employment, including enhanced leave to reward years in service". He added: "The government and the Treasury pay lip–service to calls to modernise pay systems but now they will need to remove their heads from the sand." He said the union had been told by the Treasury that no additional funding would be available to equalise pay as a result of the ruling and that "outstanding anomalies" would have to be "resolved within the chancellor‘s stranglehold of a 2% pay limit". "That is not acceptable," he said.