OTLEY and Yeadon's MP has spoken of the 'huge challenges' facing the NHS.

The health service recently celebrated its 69th anniversary but Alex Sobel (Lab, Leeds North West) fears hard times lie ahead unless the Government changes course.

To mark the anniversary local Labour campaigners held an opinion poll in the centre of Otley on Saturday, July 9 about the current, one per cent annual pay rise cap for nurses.

They say the results showed 'overwhelming' support for the cap to be scrapped.

Mr Sobel said: "Health workers' pay will have been cut by 12 per cent over the decade.

"The Prime Minister wants a one per cent pay cap 'til 2020 and student bursaries for nurses have been scrapped, while the number of EU nurses coming here has fallen by 90 per cent since Brexit.

"Nurses, midwives and other health workers are leaving faster than they’re joining - the NHS is becoming dangerously stretched."

Labour campaigner Nigel Gill was one of those conducting the 'straw poll' in Otley.

He said: "The vote was overwhelmingly against the pay cap.

"There is public anger that the Prime Minister can suddenly find £1.5 billion to buy the support of Democratic Unionist Party MPs but won't give nurses and other health workers a decent pay rise to run the NHS."

Mr Sobel, meanwhile, says it is important to realise how government spending over the past two decades has directly affected local services.

He points out that Labour increased NHS spending, while last in power, so that it reached 8.8 per cent of the country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by 2009.

He said: "Then under the 2010 Tory-Lib Dem Coalition NHS spending as a proportion of GDP declined again.

"We now spend less on health care than 12 other EU countries.

"Voters were promised '£350 million extra a week on NHS' if they voted for Brexit - that promise disappeared overnight.

"The NHS is also struggling with the crisis in social care funding. People who could go home or convalesce in residential care are stuck in hospital beds because local authority budgets to do assessments and arrange care packages have been cut to the bone by the Government."

Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust opened two wards at Wharfedale Hospital - for older patients awaiting discharge - earlier this year in the face of winter pressure on its ‘acute’ beds.

The move was hailed by some but Mr Sobel believes it reflects the underlying problems.

He said: "These are not ‘new NHS beds.

"It’s good the Trust has found them for social care patients to relieve pressure on acute beds, and local patients and families do of course benefit, but these privately staffed wards are not so much a success as representative of a huge failure in government funding for social care."