CLEARLY, the government's bid to deliver on its already-tarnished pledge to cut NHS waiting lists by bringing in thousands more trained nurses and training places suffered a severe setback today - as recruitment to the profession was revealed to be plunging.

The slump in trainee nurses - a 15 per cent drop of more than 8,000 in the last four years - was described as "surprising and horrific" by the Royal College of Nursing.

Health Secretary Frank Dobson may grimly concur with the latter summary in view of his drive to use much of the £19billion extra the NHS is getting over the next three years to put more nurses on the wards.

After all, where are they going to come from if the number of trainees is already tumbling so seriously?

But, unlike the RCN, we are not so surprised at this.

Nor should Mr Dobson. For, while bankrolled last month by Chancellor Gordon Brown with all those extra billions for the years ahead, he has hitherto been in a cash straitjacket that has forced poor pay rewards on nursing and made it increasingly unattractive to potential recruits - and may still do so if the anti-inflation clamp on public sector pay awards continues as signalled.

The upshot has been a slump in morale.

Thus while Labour, through keeping to the Tories' spending plans for two years, has been able to keep its pledge not to increase Income Tax, it has allowed the baleful consequences to undermine nursing.

And it will be hard pressed to escape them, unless Mr Dobson can persuade Mr Brown to ease off on the inflation brake by making nurses a special case for a swift and significant pay rise.

But, in doing that, he could unleash a flood of similar claims from elsewhere in the public sector.

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