By Benjamin Jenkins

Jeremy Hunt has been called out for trying to rewrite history at the Conservative Party Conference after he claimed that the Tories were responsible for the creation of the National Health Service.

The Secretary of State for Health played a clip from 1944 when the NHS was founded, insinuating that it was the Conservatives that had created it.

But the Tories fought it “tooth and nail” all the way through Parliament on a three line whip and voted against the creation of the NHS 22 times including at the Third Reading.

The white paper discussed by Hunt today was put forward during the Government of National Unity that served during World War 2, in which time the Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill dealt with the ‘War Front’ and Deputy Prime Minister, Labour leader Clement Attlee, ran the ‘Home Front’.

The statement has been described as a “shamefully Orwellian rewriting of British History” for which Jeremy Hunt should “be forced to apologise.”

Speaking to The London Economic, Shadow Secretary of State for Health Jon Ashworth said: “Jeremy Hunt’s claim the Tories created the NHS is laughable.

“Over the last 70 years the Tories have under funded and tried to sell off the NHS.

“Labour governments have always stepped in to fully fund and rebuild the NHS.

“And so it will again fall to the next Labour Government to give the NHS the funding it needs and rebuild it to deliver the quality world class health service every patient deserves.”

Watch the clip in full below:

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