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?

Charlie Stayt discusses the Tory pledge to have '50,000 more nurses for the NHS' with Conservative @MattHancock on #BBCBreakfast.More here: https://t.co/jkOHsGnQYlpic.twitter.com/TdaSnRozL4 — BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) November 28, 2019

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.”

That isn’t more nurses. Retention isn’t more, it is the same. And that’s only if all 18,500 could be persuaded to stay. — Simon Hodder 🔶 (@hodder44) November 28, 2019

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.

Also on rt.com ‘Plot against NHS & country’: Corbyn accuses BoJo of planning to ‘sell-off’ healthcare in UK-US post-Brexit trade talks docs

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