Hundreds of NHS staff march against job cuts

Hundreds of health workers took to the streets to protest at cuts to NHS jobs and services, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Campaigners - protesting against the government for slashing budgets - marched through Manchester and staged a rally in Albert Square.

It was part of a national day of action by the NHS Together alliance of unions and other organisations.

Karen Reissman, chair of the Manchester branch of Unison for community and mental health services, warned the crowd of about 400 that the NHS was under threat.

She said: "In a few years time we won't have a National Health Service to defend, unless we act now.

"The scale on which the NHS is being attacked is unprecedented. It isn't as if Britain isn't a rich country and can't afford a decent NHS. It most certainly can."

The action was also in support of 250 mental health workers who have been on strike over cuts in jobs and services, downgrading of jobs and threats of privatisation.

Lillian Elliot, a union rep in the national blood service, said it was facing the threat of nine blood processing and testing centres being reduced to just three.

She said: "If this comes to pass, we will see vital blood supplies spending most of their time on a motorway."

Angela Murphy, a senior radiographer at Hope Hospital in Salford, said staff face having to work two-and-a-half hours a week more while pay increases are less than inflation. She said: "We are also facing the possibility of redundancies and there are lot of very angry people within the profession."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber sent a good luck message to the organisers saying: "I know that NHS staff in Manchester take real pride in the improvements in health care delivered in recent years."

An NHS Together banner was raised at the peak of England's third highest mountain - Skiddaw in the Lake District - to support the day of action.