‘Can you do the maths?’: UK Health Secretary in painful interview over 50,000 more nurses claim

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been given a torrid time in a TV interview and questioned whether he can “do the maths,” after he claimed nurses already working in the NHS can be used in his Tory party’s ‘50,000 more’ pledge.

In an interview with presenter Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast, Hancock, the minister responsible for setting out the detail in the Tories’ program from healthcare - doubled down on the promise of 50,000 extra nurses. That’s despite the fact that 18,500 of these nurses already work in the NHS.

Ostensibly, the health secretary argued that retention numbers could be included in the ‘more’ figures, which left Stayt feeling frustrated and slightly bewildered.

If you take 50,000 - which is your big number - and you take 18,500 away who are already nurses - can you do the maths? How many do you have left?

Hancock failed to answer the question, instead bizarrely changed tack to explain that the Conservatives are not promising 50,000 “new” nurses, but rather 50,000 “more” nurses, in measures to stop thousands of nurses leaving the NHS.

Hancock’s calculations were given a drubbing on social media, with many accusing him of not being able to grasp “basic” maths. One person on Twitter sarcastically joked that the health secretary was employing “creative accounting, it's what crooks do when they are fiddling the books to hide stuff from the tax man.”

It comes after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused PM Boris Johnson on Wednesday of a “cover up” in relation to the future of the NHS in any trade deals with the US, post Brexit. Corbyn produced what he said was evidence of not only a “plot against our NHS,” but a “plot against our country” in UK-US post-Brexit trade talks un-redacted documents.

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