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Nine in ten of England’s largest hospital trusts are struggling to hire enough nurses to keep patients safe, damning new stats show.

Almost all the 50 largest trusts - which together run 150 hospitals - are missing their own safe staffing targets according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Janet Davies, general secretary of the RCN, warned patients will pay the “very highest price when the government encourages nursing on the cheap”.

She told the Sunday Times that nurses are being increasingly replaced by cheaper, unqualified healthcare assistants.

Data shows more than half of the largest hospitals have tried to cope with staffing crisis by bringing more unregistered staff on shift.

And the situation is worse at night, when two thirds of hospitals use unregistered support staff.

(Image: Getty)

“Nurses have degrees and expert training,” Ms Davies said.

“To be blunt, the evidence shows patients stand a better chance of survival and recovery when there are more of them on the ward.”

Hospitals have been forced to publish their own staffing levels since 2014 in response to the Mid-Staffs hospitals scandal, which saw patients die from neglect.

The RCN says the most-poorly staffed site at present is the Royal Blackburn Hospital, which had only three-quarters of the nurses it needed on duty in the latest stats.

The union says across the country there are 40,000 nurse vacancies and has warned Brexit will only make matters worse.

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The number of people applying to become NHS nurses from Europe has collapsed since the vote to leave the EU last year.

The RCN says low pay is also to blame following seven years of real-terms wage cuts handed out by the Tory Government.

The Government’s decision to axe bursaries for student nurses has also been blamed as a factor in the recruitment crisis.

But a Department of Health spokesman insisted that overall the number of nurses is up since 2010, and that it plans to recruit thousands more in the coming years.

“Just this month we announced an extra 10,000 places for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals by 2020,” the spokesman said.