The 3.7 per cent pay award will do nothing to stop the falling number of nurses in the NHS.

Such is the crisis, a report commissioned by the Royal College of Nursing predicted that by 2004, 110,000 new recruits will be needed if the Government is to reach its target of 20,000 extra nurses.

Nurses are clearly giving Tony Blair the thumbs down on his handling of the NHS and showing their disgust by leaving the profession.

The Government claimed the NHS would improve under its stewardship. Yet in three years a winter crisis has become a year-round crisis. Further evidence Labour is all spin and no delivery.

-Carol Ramsden, Ditchling Rise, Brighton