The Royal College of Nursing officer for Liverpool told the Liverpool Echo that hospitals across Merseyside had been freezing jobs and making redundancies.

He said: “Day in day out, we’re hearing about nursing posts frozen, operations cancelled, wards under threat of closure, and examples like this where people are concerned about insufficient staffing."

“ we know posts everywhere are being frozen whilst hundreds of nursing students are available to fill them.”

The news came to light after the Echo revealed that an 85 year old lady was "left to die in filth" in her hospital bed as overworked nurses struggled to cope.