HOW much do we appreciate our present Health Service?

The policies of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats do not give me any reassurance that it will be safe in their hands.

As a nurse with 40 years’ service in the NHS I know that the service makes a huge demand on our taxes in order to give us all the superb quality that we now enjoy, but I cannot forget during the governments of Thatcher and Major the way that they dealt with the problem.

Bureaucrats were brought into the hospitals at the expense of doctors and nurses.

Recruitment of nurses was reduced, and nurses obtaining their registration were given only two-month contracts, this to facilitate their disposal when budgets demanded.

This was in contrast to the traditional way in which newly-registered nurses were given positions on a permanent basis in the hospitals in which they had trained if they so wished.

This change in policy caused great demoralisation among the nurses who had worked hard to obtain their qualifications, and caused many to leave the profession, never to return.

With the loss of British-trained nurses, hospitals needed to employ foreign nurses, especially Filipinos, who, while they carried out their duties in an exemplary manner, were recruited through private nursing agencies.

Their wages exceeded those of British nurses. Obviously the politicians got their economics wrong. Or was it a deliberate policy by the previous Conservative government as part of their intention to reduce the free NHS?

V J Webster SRN RMN DN, Upper Road, Kennington