Thousands of NHS workers, including nurses, midwives and ambulance staff, have begun a four-hour strike.

Workers from six trade unions are taking part, which will disrupt some NHS services - although urgent and emergency care will be unaffected.

MPs’ pay will rise by 10 per cent next year, taking their salaries to £74,000, the new head of Parliament’s expenses watchdog has said.

Research has found that between 1997 and 2010 average earnings rose by 121 per cent for chief executives of NHS trusts, almost twice the rise given to nurses.
Those running hospital trusts can earn up to £260,000, with an average salary of about £164,000.

The chairman of a failing hospital trust due to be taken over by an NHS 'hit squad' said today it would have been a 'grave mistake and a false economy' not to boost the chief executive's salary by £25,000. 
Karen Jackson is in charge of Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals Foundation Trust, which was put in special measures last month after a major national review of high mortality rates.
Yet she received the inflation-busting rise from £145,000 to £170,000 in April last year.

The NHS paid a hospital chief executive £3,163 a day – nearly twice as much as a nurse takes home in a month, figures reveal.
Derek Smith received £387,220 for the 141 days he worked on a temporary basis as boss of the cash-strapped Dorset County Hospital.