STAFF in the Scottish NHS have overwhelmingly backed strike action over falling take-home pay.

Health union GMB said 4,000 paramedics, technicians, nurses, porters, domestics and radiographers now have a mandate to withdraw their labour after SNP ministers offered a below-inflation wage boost of 7 per cent to most workers.

Some 89 per cent of Scottish Ambulance Service workers who voted supported walkouts, as did well over 90 per cent of the union’s members at the Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board, Lanarkshire, Forth Valley and Lothian.