The National Health Service should receive the cash boost it was promised during the EU referendum, boss Simon Stevens is expected to say later.
The health service was promised £350 million a week during the referendum financed by the payments we would receive back from Europe when we are divorced from the union.
However the populist claims were rubbished soon after the result – with experts pointing out that we receive a rebate of £100 million back.
But given that the “NHS bus” played such a vital part of the successful Leave campaign, the promise should be honoured to the British public, Stevens will argue.
Speaking to delegates gathered in Birmingham, he will say: “The NHS wasn’t on the ballot paper, but it was on the Battle Bus. Vote Leave for a better funded health service – £350m a week.
“Rather than our criticising these clear Brexit funding commitments to NHS patients – promises entered into by cabinet ministers and by MPs – the public want to see them honoured.
Does the £350m claim stack up?
“Trust in democratic politics will not be strengthened if anyone now tries to argue: ‘You voted Brexit, partly for a better funded health service. But precisely because of Brexit, you now can’t have one.’
“A modern NHS is itself part of the practical answer to the deep social concerns that gave rise to Brexit.
“At a time of national division, an NHS that brings us together. An institution that tops the list of what people say makes them proudest to be British. Ahead of the Army, the monarchy or the BBC. Unifying young and old, town and country, the struggling and the better off.”
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