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Jeremy Hunt has admitted making false claims in the House of Commons today.

Speaking on World Mental Health Day, he inflated the increase of mental health workers in the NHS by 43 times.

The Health Secretary has corrected the official record, and said it was an “error.”

But a spokesperson for the Department of Health said he has no intention of making an apology for misleading MPs.

He boasted there are 30,000 more people working in mental health today than when Labour left office.

He later repeated his false claim, saying: “We have 30,000 more professionals working in mental health than when my Government came into office.”

But after Channel 4 News’ FactCheck questioned the claim, the Department of Health admitted the figure included all professionally qualified clinical NHS staff, not just mental health workers.

(Image: AFP)

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “This was an error and we will be correcting Hansard accordingly.”

The correct figure, according to FactCheck, is an increase of just 692 people.

The increase has been largely driven by a rise in the number of psychotherapists in the Health Service, while the number of mental health nurses has dropped by more than 5,000 since 2010.

Barbara Keeley, Labour's Shadow Cabinet Member for Mental Health and Social Care said: "The Tory government claim to want to make mental health a priority, but Jeremy Hunt doesn't even know how many mental health staff are working in the NHS.

"Safe staffing was an issue raised by the CQC's new State of Care report this week. Labour will invest more in mental health so that all services are staffed safely."

Mr Hunt initially made the claim in response to the opening question in today's Health Questions in the House of Commons, from Tory colleague Stephen McPartland.

In a question provided to Mr Hunt in advance of the session, Mr McPartland asked "what steps he has taken to increase the size of the mental health workforce."

Reading from papers in front of him, Mr Hunt replied: "Our mental health workforce has increased by 30,000 since 2010, and another 21,000 posts are planned."

When a Member of Parliament inadvertently misleads the house, it is common practice for them to come to the house and apologise.

Dave Munday, the Unite union's lead officer for mental health said: "Jeremy Hunt is shameless in trying to distort the true reality of what's happened to mental health nursing under the Tories and should apologise to parliament.

"On his watch we've seen the number of mental health nurses plummet by 13.1% because of austerity and real term pay cuts. The truth is there's a crisis in mental health because of him and the Tory government."

Mr Hunt has previously been accused of misleading the House over his claim that there were 11,000 'excess deaths' in the NHS at weekends.

The claim was slammed by doctors, who accused him of misrepresenting a paper written by NHS England Medical Director Sir Bruce Keogh for the British Medical Journal.

The paper reads: "It is not possible to ascertain the extent to which these excess deaths may be preventable, to assume that they are avoidable would be rash and misleading."