The NHS did receive more funding, but it had nothing to do with leaving the EU
Kemi Badenoch has embarrassed herself again, this time claiming that the Tories delivered the £350 million extra per week for the NHS, as laid out on Vote Leave’s Brexit red bus and repeatedly promised by Boris Johnson.
On Sky News, the Tory leader called NHS funding a “conundrum”. She said: I remember coming into Parliament as a brand new MP, and we were talking about how we’re giving the biggest amount we’ve ever given to the NHS, record funding.
“We’ve been doing this again and again. I mean, who remembers the side of a red bus that said ‘we’re going to give the NHS £350 million more a week’?
“Many people don’t know that we did that. We did do that, and yet, still we’re not seeing the returns.”
It’s true that Theresa May pledged additional funding for the NHS in 2018, when she committed an additional £20 billion a year for the health service by 2023.
However, this had nothing to do with achieving the bogus Vote Leave campaign pledge and wasn’t funded by money ‘saved’ from leaving the EU.
While the £350 million figure was bandied around during the Brexit referendum, the UK’s contribution to the EU budget was more like £234 million a week.
Not only that, but it cost the UK around £30.2 billion to leave the bloc, enough to cover Vote Leave’s questionable £350 million-a-week pledge for more than a year and a half.
The Tories like to keep rewriting Brexit history but the Brexit bus broke down a long time ago.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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