A FORMER head of midwifery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford will today urge Government to run a second referendum on Brexit for the sake of the NHS.

Gill Walton, who is now head of the Royal College of Midwives, will attack the claims of leavers who say Brexit will mean more money for the health service.

In a speech at this year's Labour Party Conference, she will outline how staff from other EU countries care for '60,000 people in every 36-hour period'.

Ms Walton, who ran midwifery for several years at the JR, will also point to the 'massive' drop in EU midwives coming to the UK since the referendum, and tell party members 'we have already seen the number of midwives coming to the UK from elsewhere in the EU collapse to just 33. That’s right, the latest figures are that just 33 EU midwives registered to work in the UK over an entire year. They used to arrive in their hundreds'.

The warning comes after Oxford University Hospitals, trust which runs the JR and midwifery services across the county, was forced to suspended all services outside Oxford on Thursday night because of a peak in demand at the JR and a shortage of staff.

Community hospitals this weekend tried to reassure expectant mums that if they came in they could get a birth, but warned that if demand was high at the JR they might still have to go to Oxford.