Prime Minister Boris Johnson is at least consistent in one respect: his major statements begin to be discredited within minutes – as soon as anyone can check the details. Just recently we have had false and discredited claims on:
£1.8 billion of “new money” for capital investment, most of which was not new.
Claims to be building 40 new hospitals – when the real figure is six, some of which are rebuilds, with decisions on the others not due until at least 2025.
Claims to be spending “record amounts” and £33.9 billion extra by 2024, when the real terms increase is just £20.5 billion, a 3.1% annual increase, much less than the pre-2010 average annual increases, and less than the 4.1% called for by the BMA and leading think tanks.
The launch of the threadbare 59-page Conservative Manifesto was another classic example. Headlines were first grabbed by a promise of 50,000 “more nurses,” although committing to no timescale and not defining whether this is full time equivalent or a headcount.
Debunked
This was swiftly debunked, by the Guardian and Independent, by Nursing Notes and by Full Fact. The Independent pointed out that at most 31,500 would be “extra” nurses:
“The 50,000 figure includes an estimated 18,500 existing nurses who will be encouraged to remain within the NHS or attracted back after leaving …. The recruitment plan also includes 14,000 new nursing training places … as well as 5,000 more nursing apprentices and 12,500 recruits from abroad ….”
Safe staffing: it’s not just about nurses and doctors
The viability of recruiting so many overseas nurses given the brutal immigration policies unveiled by the Johnson government has also been questioned by Nursing Notes and the Royal College of Nursing.
Full Fact has also raise doubts over the minimal £879 million allocated to funding the extra nursing staff and reinstating the bursary for student nurses that was axed by the Tories — with a minimum of £5,000 per year.
They argue that the full cost of employing 50,000 Band 5 nurses could be as high as £2.6 billion per year. And with the latest figures showing 39,500 nursing posts vacant, an extra 50,000 would increase numbers by just 10,000.
The promise of 6,000 extra GPs also grabbed attention, with the related promise of 50 million more appointments each year. The promise had already been made by Matt Hancock – and exposed by Pulse magazine as another misleading claim, including 3,000 trainees along with 3,000 qualified GPs in the total.
The BMA response to the Manifesto pledge pointed to the abysmal failure of governments since 2015 to deliver on Jeremy Hunt’s infamous promise of an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020: in fact numbers have fallen by 1,000 in the past five years.
So what of the Manifesto promise to scrap fees for parking at English NHS hospitals, billed by the Sunday Telegraph as axing charges for “millions”?
The Mirror was the first to look closer and show that the promise is very cagey, making parking free only for those “in greatest need”. So unless you are disabled, a “frequent” outpatient attender, a parent of a sick child staying overnight or a night shift NHS worker you will still have to fork out: the majority of staff, outpatients and almost all hospital visitors will still have to pay.
And so it goes on: other pledges are equally slippery and misleading. Social care is fobbed off with an extra £1 billion a year, and the problem kicked back into the long grass. Mental health gets another gush of warm words, but no new resources.
Voters who want a decisive break from the current crisis and decline of the NHS will need to look to parties other than the Tories.
The Lowdown will soon publish an overview of the manifestos of all the main parties.
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