There are more nurses than ever

I WRITE in response to Mr Quinn’s letter of September 27, in which he misquotes a previous comment in an earlier letter on the NHS by Alan Wright.

Mr Quinn is on record as writing a letter in September 2012 stating that “The Royal College of Nursing blames financial pressures, nursing shortages and Tory reforms that have led to the loss of 50,000 nurses, doctors and midwives so far”.

If Mr Quinn was to check facts before writing he would have found that The Health and Social Care Information Centre stated that numbers in the NHS were “almost unchanged” since 2010. Other data shows there has been about a 0.5 per cent reduction in jobs ( about 6,000) since 2010 mainly in senior managers and infrastructure staff.

Recent figures released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, NHS Workforce Statistics show there are now 312,409 nurses, midwives and health visitors – 1,616 more than in May 2010.

There are now more nurses in our NHS than ever under Labour. This is before the future increase announced this week.

Labour’s Alistair Darling said during the Scottish Referendum campaign “Frightening people on health, cancer patients, the elderly and vulnerable is despicable”.

Wise words indeed. Mr Quinn and others should heed them. Keith O’Brien, Middle Herrington