Only 1,400 new UK nurses per year – ‘small print’ reveals Tories’ 18,500 new nurse lie only tip iceberg

Actual number of new UK nurses in Tory plan is tiny

The ‘small print’ of the Tories’ manifesto claim (video here) that they will ‘recruit 50,000 more nurses’ is almost as shocking as their claim that retaining 18,500 nurses – in an NHS already 43,000 nurses short – justifies including them in the 50,000 total.

The phoney headline claim is bad enough – but even setting aside the fake 18,500 ‘new’ nurse claim, the detail of the Tory plan reveals the scale of the deception the Tories are trying to perpetrate on UK voters.

Not only are the Tories including 5,000 nursing apprenticeships in their fraudulent 50,000 figure – but the number of new UK nurses they claim they will recruit is tiny.

Just 1,400 a year.

The Tory ‘promise’, which is spread over a ten-year period,

• includes 5,000 nursing apprenticeships
• includes “retaining” 18,500 existing nurses
• relies on poaching 12,000 nurses from other countries’ health systems
• involves recruiting only 1,040 new UK nurses per year

The Tory manifesto also leaves out any promise to restore bursaries for student nurses, which the Tories scrapped, meaning that any new nursing students still face incurring large debts to obtain their qualifications – a major obstacle to recruitment.

The Tories’ flagship manifesto policy is a huge fraud on the British people.

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