Conservative ministers intensified attacks on Brussels on Sunday, with the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, suggesting the European commission had deliberately interfered in the general election to boost Labour’s electoral prospects.

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, also condemned the “aggressive tactics” of the commission, after an unflattering account of talks at Downing Street was leaked to a German newspaper last week. Both Rudd and Hunt said the intervention had been timed to affect the result of the UK general election on 8 June.

Rudd said it was “very clear that they did muddle insofar as they put out these very unhelpful, slightly hostile, comments”. The leak had suggested “Theresa May shouldn’t be leading the negotiations,” Rudd said, as well as circulating the possibility of a €100bn bill of liabilities for the UK upon exit. This is quite aggressive negotiating tactics,” she said.

Echoing the words of the prime minister, who used an address outside No 10 to allege that threats were “deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election,” Hunt said some parties had a vested interest in the failure of Brexit negotiations.

Hunt said he assumed the commission wanted to undermine the Conservatives and did not challenge the idea that this was intended to help Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. When asked who the commission favoured, he said: “Well, you’ll have to ask them why they chose to do that, but I think the answer is very clear that they are trying to leak reports that undermine Theresa May’s position.”

Questioned specifically on whether the aim had been to harm the Conservatives, he said: “That must be the presumption and what we’re saying is that they should not be doing that, because it’s an election for the British people to decide.”

A failure to secure a good exit deal would be a “disaster for the NHS” the health secretary said. “We’ve got 27 countries lined up against us,” Hunt told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show. “Some of them appear to think that for the EU to survive, Britain must fail.”

Hunt said the NHS was dependent on the UK’s economic recovery and growth. “If we don’t get a good Brexit outcome and we don’t protect the economic recovery, the jobs that so many people depend on, whose taxes pay for the NHS, if we get a bad Brexit outcome, that would be a disaster for the NHS,” he said.

However, the health secretary refused to specify what a bad deal would be, or to say whether the UK leaving the EU without an agreement and defaulting to World Trade Organisation tariffs would also affect the NHS.

“We’ve been very clear that no deal is better than a bad deal,” he said. “I’m saying that a good deal would be best for the NHS, but obviously a bad deal would be the worst possible outcome for all our public services. It would be bad for the country.”

A pro-remain Conservative, Anna Soubry, said the enmity between the government and Brussels should not be overblown. “Look, these are opening salvos,” she told Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News. “It’s like those boxers, they do all that stuff before they actually get in the ring.

“Honestly, I think this is just a bit of puff and we are in a general election. I wouldn’t have used those terms but the prime minister is getting out there, she wants to win well. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Meanwhile, Conservative sources strongly denied suggestions by Rudd in her interview on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics that the party was considering ditching its commitment to reduce net migration to tens of thousands. “We are having a new manifesto – it’s not going to be identical to the last one,” Rudd said when asked about the pledge. “It’s right that we look at it again.”

A senior campaign source insisted that the same commitment, which the Conservatives have consistently failed to meet, would be retained by May, pointing to comments by the prime minister in late April when she said she “believes that sustainable net migration is in the tens of thousands”.

The home secretary said the party had an “open mind” about proposals for so-called “barista visas” for EU citizens to work in the hospitality trade, but said firms including sandwich chain Pret a Manger must do more to recruit British staff. “I’d quite like them to make more of an effort to recruit in the UK,” she said.



The Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, Tom Brake, said Hunt and Rudd’s comments showed senior Tories were admitting a hard Brexit “could be a disaster for the country”. Brake, whose party is calling for a referendum on the final Brexit deal, said the comments were “a taste of the chaos to come if the Conservatives are able to force through a hard Brexit without a strong opposition to hold them to account”.

May will meet Conservative candidates in London and the east of England on Monday to give a speech on the party’s pledges on mental health, which were announced over the weekend.

The prime minister has pledged to scrap the Mental Health Act and introduce a mental health treatment bill to limit the numbers of people held in detention for their mental health problems. The Conservative manifesto will pledge 10,000 more mental health professionals working in the NHS by 2020.

In a first for May, her husband Philip is scheduled to do an interview alongside her this week, with the couple appearing together on the sofa for the BBC’s The One Show.