“The UK Statistics Authority looked into the prime minister’s repeated use of the £10bn claim after Labour and the British Medical Association complained that the figure was misleading and wrong. It has asked the Treasury to overhaul how government spending on both the NHS and health more widely is presented in order to minimise the risk of further “confusion” about the size of budget rises.
The UKSA’s intervention followed an increasingly public disagreement between May and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, over how much extra funding the government had pledged to give the health service over the course of this parliament. May has put the figure at £10bn in the House Commons, a newspaper interview and at the Conservative party conference. She said that sum meant her administration was giving the NHS more money than the £8bn it had asked for in 2014 in order to transform how it works and close a £30bn budget gap by 2020.
Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, accused the prime minister of exaggerating the true sum and using “spin” to try to present the government in a better light over the NHS. Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA’s ruling council, had also asked the UKSA to look into May’s claim. …
… The UKSA intends to ask the Treasury to “investigate whether in future they can present estimates for NHS England and total health sending separately. I will also explore with officials producing these figures other ways in which they might ensure clarity around sources, time periods and what is being measured, and in what context, when reporting on the level of increase in real budget allocations to NHS England.”
While Hunt has acknowledged that the £10bn was the budget increases over a six-year period, May has yet to do the same.”
East Devon Watch 
How ironic – on the same day that the UKSA says the figures are wrong and misleading the HoC Tory majority debates NHS funding and makes a formal statement.
In yesterdays NHS funding debate neither Neil Pariah nor Hugo Swine said anything. See https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2016-11-22a.820.0&s=speaker%3A25120
But there was a vote about what the HoC wanted to say about the funding crisis. The original text was:
That this House notes with concern that the deficit in the budgets of NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England at the end of the 2015–16 financial year was £2.45 billion; further notes that members of the Health Committee wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about their concerns that Government assertions on NHS funding were incorrect and risked giving a false impression; and calls on the Government to use the Autumn Statement to address the underfunding of the NHS and guarantee sustainable financing of the NHS.
However the Conservatives voted to change this to:
That this House welcomes the Government’s investment, on the back of a strong economy, of significant additional funding and resources each year for the NHS during the 2015 Parliament; notes that this settlement was frontloaded at the specific request of the NHS in NHS England’s own plan to deliver an improved and more sustainable service, the Five Year Forward View; and further notes that the NHS will receive a real terms increase in funding in each year of the Spending Review period, while the Labour Party’s Manifesto at the last election committed to only an extra £2.5 billion a year by 2020, far less than the NHS requested.
And both Neil Pariah and Hugo Swine voted for the revised text, turning a call for increased funding into a sycophantic statement about how wonderful the Government is funding the NHS.
So next time either of our MPs say how concerned they are about the NHS and how they will fight for extra funding (like Hugo Swire said in Pulman’s only yesterday) you should consider carefully whether they are really fighting for extra funding or simply paying lip service (or as we commoners might say “lying”) in order to keep your votes.
LikeLike