REGARDING your reports of nurses, 4x4-driving volunteers and other members of the NHS family going well beyond their contractual duties to provide care for their patients and society in general during the recent bad weather, I hope the Government has taken note.

Staff have ploughed through the most horrendous and hazardous weather conditions to get to their hospitals and yet they have been treated with disdain by the Government which has denied them a well earned pay award for many years! It is time for this to end.

I hope people will now challenge the Government to step up to the plate and deliver a fair and proper pay rise this year. After all, if the UK can afford £12bn a year in foreign aid and £156m per week payments to the EU, then Westminster can definitely afford a four per cent pay award for our angels!

Mark Anderson, Middleton St George