Quite rightly, Matron Geoffrey Walker continues the fight for better wages for nursing staff.

Whilst adding our support, we would like to ask readers to please remember the hidden army in the NHS who are poorly paid too.

The very sick rely on porters and healthcare assistants to transport them, and a good number have contracted Covid whilst doing so.

Without the skills of electricians, plumbers and other crafts people, patients would have no lighting, heating, water, or oxygen piped through hospital walls.

Clinical engineers play another vital role.

Like their colleagues, they risk their lives on Covid wards, carrying out emergency repairs to ventilators and other medical machines which patients need to keep them alive.

Yet the staff I refer to here, as well as many others, are on some of the lowest pay grades in the NHS.

Please remember the invisible scores of men and women who use their strengths and skills to take care of us, and support Unite in its campaign to give 15% to all of those who work in the NHS: #NHSpay15. Thank you.

Pat Stevens , PhD

Unite Branch Chair, Dorset Healthcare Sector