READERS will have been appalled to see the Conservative minister, Nadine Dorries MP, defend her Government's snub to NHS workers in the recent budget.

After all the professionalism, hard work and commitment from workers across our National Health Service it was absolutely astonishing for her to claim that the UK cannot afford to pay NHS workers more than a 1% pay rise this year.

This comes after a decade of austerity and public sector pay freezes.

It was equally astonishing that after 20 months of empty promises, the Government did not take the opportunity to announce more money to tackle the growing crisis faced by our social care system.

Across social care many thousands of workers continue to earn little more than the basic national minimum wage and not surprisingly morale is at rock bottom.

The budget would have been an ideal time to announce a significant boost to the National Minimum Wage to help these and other valuable low paid workers.

Over the past year the Conservatives have shown their true colours.

First we saw Boris Johnson reward our key workers with the ‘clap for carers’.

Now we have seen those same key workers rewarded with a ‘slap in the face’.

Joan Pritchard-Jones, by email