NURSES in the Health Service have never had it so good, according to a retired worker with 40 years' experience.

Blackburn with Darwen councillor Frank Gorton, who worked as a nurse at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Queen's Park Hospital from 1946 to 1986, said Health Secretary Alan Milburn's reforms announced after the budget last week will mean better careers for nurses than ever before.

And he said it will mean better services for patients, too, once the reforms have been brought in.

But a health workers' union spokesman today said staffing levels and pay were a major concern and it remained to be seen what affect the reforms would have.

Coun Gorton, who said his family between them had more than 100 years experience working for the health service, said: "The Government are going in the right direction to modernise the set up in the NHS. And people quite rightly think that if you say something is going to happen, it is going to happen tomorrow, if not yesterday.

"Having had the experience myself, I can say it is a great service to be able to provide. The most important people in the hospitals are the patients. The more I think that we bring into being what Alan Milburn wants, we will be making the operation better."

Coun Gorton praised Mr Milburn's plans, which will see the modern matrons overseeing groups of specialist ward sisters, for giving nurses the chance to move up the career ladder without finding themselves simply bogged down by administration.

"I have known a lot of nurses who have wanted to move up the ladder, and when they got there found it is all administration, so they have gone back to nursing, because that is what they came in to the job for."