How do the Tories cover up their financial incompetence? You guessed it, they raid the NHS budget.

New House of Commons research released today by the Labour Party shows that the Tories will raid £230m new cuts to the NHS in the East of England budget over two years (2019/20 and 2020/21) to help pay for a Government mistake.

This is the equivalent of the salaries of 5197 nurses. Across England and Wales the Conservatives will take £2.7bn from the NHS because of this enormous miscalculation.

The Government quietly announced that they would be implementing £4bn in new cuts late on a Thursday – and during Parliament’s recess, when MPs are not in Westminster and cannot hold the government to account. This latest round of austerity measures will be applied on top of nearly £4bn of cuts that government departments including health were forced to make in the 2016 Budget, when the government made the same mistake.

Rosie Newbigging, Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Welwyn Hatfield said: “This shows just how empty the Tories’ promises on the NHS have always been. The Government in Westminster slipped up, but it’s the people here in Welwyn Hatfield who will pay the price. Billions of pounds are being quietly cut from our NHS, due to a poisonous cocktail of disastrous economic mismanagement and an obsession with cutting public services.  These cuts are the equivalent of paying the salary of over 5197 nurses a year. Nurses whom the East of England desperately needs after eight years of crushing austerity in our NHS.”

“Grant Shapps must immediately own up for his Government’s failure and commit to meeting these extra costs, not just push them on to slashed and struggling public services. All this just goes to show, you cannot trust the Tories with our NHS.”