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Apparently Labour Shadow Health Minister Diane Abbot told BBC News that “we wouldn’t have cut spending on the NHS which is what the Government has done”.
She even Tweeted David Cameron about it.
@david_cameron Read this statisticsauthority.gov.uk/reports—corr… and then this conservatives.com/Policy/Where_w… Why are misleading NHS claims still there?#takeitdowndave
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) December 6, 2012
Ed Miliband tried this line yesterday. Turns out it’s not true:
The Prime Minister: This Government are putting £12.6 billion extra into the NHS. Let me quote the right hon. Gentleman the figures directly from the head of the Office for National Statistics. In real terms, spending in 2010 was £104.2 billion. In 2011, it was £104.3 billion in real terms. That is a real-terms increase, and I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that there will be further real-terms increases in 2012, in 2013 and in 2014, whereas there would be cuts under Labour.
For those that didn’t watch Prime Ministers Questions, the debate seemed to centre around the NHS budget for 2010/11. As the Prime Minister pointed out, 2010 was a year Labour were in power for for 5 months, and a year in which they set the budget. Miliband was trying to drum up some support around a ruling by the UK Statistics Authority, but was constantly batted back by Cameron, so much so that he abandoned the line of questioning.
Her Leader’s line was disproved in Parliament – so why did Abbott repeat the lies on national television?
