With my own family very much affected, may I through the columns of your newspaper, give support to the nurse's pay claim?

We know that over the past 14 years, the pay of doctors working in our hospital wards alongside the nurses had been deliberately suppressed by the last Government, to force their pay levels down below where with the impact of inflation, they should be in 2024. The hidden agenda was to boost the profits of the private health companies, who now own and run our NHS, for the shareholders to benefit. No doubt many of whom were residents in Parliament. The BMA has now negotiated with this new Government, a pay restoration package starting at 22 per cent over two years.

For the very same reason, the nurses working alongside the doctors were also subjected to the same tyrannical suppression of pay over the past 14 years.

As a result, we have a brain drain of nurses and doctors said to be in the region of 50,000 a year, who are leaving to work in other countries.

It is a ludicrous and false economy for this to continue. The impact of this is leaving our hospital wards dangerously understaffed.

I know because unable to cope with the pressure and the low pay, two of my family are now nurses in Florida and driving new Tesla cars; another will soon be following them.

The practice used by the last government was to rob third-world countries of 'low-paid' professional doctors and nurses, in order to maintain the hidden agenda.

We must now grow our own professional workforce of doctors and nurses. To this end, nurses must receive the same pay restoration formulae as the Doctors. This is now being negotiated by the RCN and we must support the nurses in their fight for restoration of their pay levels.

Henry Harwood,

Hackworth Gardens,

Hedge End

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