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Real terms pay cuts for public sector workers would be a "pain free" way to help Britain recover from the recession, the head of a public spending watchdog has said.

Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred said he believed workers, including those in the NHS and education, would "tolerate" a freeze as they had "done well" over the last 10 years.

And in an outspoken tirade, he accused Labour and the Tories of hiding the true scale of required cuts.

Mr Bundred said: "At a time when inflation is likely to be between 2% and 3%, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public sector pay or at least impose severe pay restraint.

"This is especially true if real wages in the private sector are still falling."

Such a move could provide £5 billion of the £50 billion or more he said would have to be found through tax rises or spending cuts.

Health and education workers could not be exempt from the austerity measures to be fair to others, he suggested in The Observer.

He added that "ministers will correctly assume that as public sector workers have done well over the past decade they will tolerate some modest real reduction in earnings".

Amid bitter political wrangling over future spending, he warned: "Let's dismiss the notion that spending on health and education will be protected.

"Don't believe the shroud wavers who tell you grannies will die and children will starve if spending is cut. They won't. Cuts are inevitable and perfectly manageable," he said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Leader of the Opposition David Cameron have been engaged in a bitter war of words over public spending.

But Mr Bundred said neither could be trusted to be open with the public on the issue.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, angrily condemned Mr Bundred's call.

"The idea that you have to have some equity of misery, that because the private sector is suffering, the public sector must too is disgraceful.

"What it is doing is not understanding the role of public services in a recession - to sustain and rebuild the economy," he told the newspaper.