STAFF at Fairfield Hospital staged a lunchtime protest yesterday against plans to axe 800 jobs.

It was announced in May that hundreds of jobs are to go within the Pennine Acute NHS Hospitals Trust, which runs Fairfield along with North Manchester General, Royal Oldham and Rochdale Infirmary, due to budget cuts of £22million.

Health chiefs have yet to confirm which departments at which hospitals will be affected, but Trust bosses have stressed that they want to lose the majority of job losses through "natural wastage" 1,000 staff leave or retire each year and have imposed a recruitment freeze.

The two-hour demo outside the main gates to the Rochdale Old Road hospital did not affect patient services. Staff members from all four of the trust's hospitals have already marched through Manchester in protest against the job loses and Bury North MP David Chaytor and other local MPs have met with health minister Rosie Winterton to discuss the financial crisis.

Unison representatives stressed that their anger was directed at the Government rather than local management.

Trade union convenor Pete Hinchliffe said: "There have been strong calls for industrial action from our members but, at this stage, we are hoping to shame the government to their senses. We know that our patients and the public won't stand for these staffing cuts because they have told us so and are queuing up to sign our petition. How the health minister has the arrogance to describe this as the "best year yet for the NHS" beggars belief. She has lost the confience of health staff and patients and we believe that she should go."

The Pennine trust employs around 10,000, with 1,800 working at Fairfield. Union representatives are hoping the protests will prompt the government into reviewing its funding system which has left a 6.5 per cent gap between the actual cost of running the trust and the money it receives from the Department of Health, accounting for £14million.

Mr Hinchliffe added:"Yes, we are treating more patients than ever before but what we cannot do is to treat more patients with ten per cent fewer staff. Local MPs have pledged their full support and we know that they are consulting ministers regarding this.

"The North West has some of the poorest health in the UK. Our patients need a fully funded, fully staffed health service not a defeated, demoralised, under-funded organisation from which all pretence of quality has been squeezed."