PROTESTERS gathered in Victoria Square to raise their voices against cuts to the NHS.

The Save Bolton NHS group met in the town centre blaming government cuts for health service problems including patient waiting times and overworked NHS staff. 

The protesters included Labour and Green Party members, trade union groups and NHS staff, who were all joined by Labour's Bolton South East MP, Yasmin Qureshi.

Ms Qureshi gave a speech at the rally, which began at noon, and afterwards said: "For me one of the most important things in your life is your health, without it life isn't very pleasant.

"Therefore, provision of health at the point of need and free at the point of need is a crucial issue.

"We are the sixth richest country in the world and we have given tax benefits to big corporations, reduced capital gains tax and inheritance tax for people with more than a million pounds, the people who need the least help are getting the benefits and the NHS which helps everybody is being cut in real terms, people are not getting treated on time and the people who work in it are being treated poorly."

A number of people spoke during the hour-long rally, including NHS psychiatrist, Dr Kelly Cruickshank.

She said: "The government keep telling us we're spending more than ever on health care. But 66 per cent of mental health NHS trusts in 2016/17 had less money than they had five years previously.

"This is because they are not getting enough funding from this government.

"Patients are waiting 14 hours not just in A&E but in ambulances because there's no where to go. That's a political choice.

"We are not being adequately funded."

She told the crowd that in the UK there are 2.3 hospital beds per thousand people but that the average in the rest of the EU is 3.5 beds.

Joan Pritchard-Jones from Bolton Unison also spoke at the rally telling the crowd outside the town hall 'the NHS is not for sale to anybody at any price, it's ours and we are keeping it'.

She said that social care funding had been frozen and so more and more people were turning to hospitals for care, she said: "They are now taking beds and being blamed for the backlog.

"This government has blood on its hands.

"We should be doing everything we can do to make sure all services we need are funded. This government has the money, we know we have the money, we are not a poor country and we have the money to fund our services."

One of the rally's organisers, Karen Reissman, explained that she owed a lot to the NHS. In 1949 her mother, from Germany, had answered a call for more people to come from the continent to be trained up to join the new National Health Service.

Ms Reissmann went on to join the NHS too and trained as a mental health nurse.

She said: "Bolton, the locality and the whole of England are affected by massive cuts which are leaving people without the care they need."

After the rally the protesters formed up with the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) Samba Band and marched through the town centre, gaining some supportive pips from drivers in Trinity Street.

More rallies are planned by the group in Bolton, Wigan and Chorley throughout the year.