DEAR Chancellor, I have just returned from hospital where I was looked after with great skill and kindness.

As an ex-nurse however I am horrified at the conditions under which staff now have to work.

I am addressing this to you because at the root of the problem is your policy of continuing cuts in all public services.

A report by the Public Accounts Committee has warned that the NHS is short of about 50,000 front line staff. It is struggling with a serious and growing lack of personnel, especially nurses.

Over the past three years, the number of respondents contracted to work more than 12-hour shifts has increased significantly.

Over two thirds of them are not taking some or all of their breaks and over a third are working over their contracted hours without pay.

Stress and pressure are not openly spoken of, instead staff are expected to get on with it and are often afraid to speak out for fear of being “awkward”.

We need to recruit more nurses but are going to cut their student bursaries.

They are to pay for their own training in spite of spending a lot of it working on the wards.

Nurses’ pay rises remain regularly less than inflation and are therefore in fact cuts. This is hardly an incentive.

On most wards, there are patients suffering from dementia who wander about lost, unhappy and often increasingly aggressive. They need a safe, stable environment and specialised care but owing to continual swingeing cuts to local government grants they cannot be supported in their own communities and are taking up much needed beds in general hospitals.

Anna Smyth Knutsford