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The Tory failure to properly fund the NHS should be probed by the Government’s Budget watchdog, Labour said yesterday.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell called for the Office of Budget Responsibility to be handed beefed-up powers to rule on health cash.

The demand follows a huge row over claims ministers are pumping an extra £10billion into health coffers – a figure disputed by MPs.

In a letter to OBR chairman Robert Chote, Mr McDonnell warns there is “widespread public distrust in the government’s presentation of the level of funding and support for the NHS and social care”.

He says: “The success of the OBR in recent years in bringing greater clarity to government spending is commendable, and I believe it is why it has led to much debate of setting up an OBR–like structure to the monitoring of spending across the NHS.”

(Image: Getty)

He told the Mirror: “Labour warned over and over that there was a looming winter crisis in the NHS due to Tory cuts, but the Tories have tried to ignore the issue and play with statistics to hide the crisis going on in our NHS.

“Now it’s got to the stage where the Red Cross, an organisation that works in war-torn countries, has been forced to blow the whistle on the Tory crisis going on in our NHS.

“People won’t trust statistics if the Tories keep making them up as they go along, so I have asked the OBR to intervene and put the record straight.”