My patients deserve so much better than Boris Johnson’s spin and lies about the NHS Johnson’s claims about the NHS are mostly either untrue, unachievable or unrealistic

I have watched six prime ministers since I came to the UK in 1978, and I have never encountered a Prime Minister who lies so regularly, so shamelessly and as systematically as Boris Johnson.

As far as I can tell, Johnson’s claims about the NHS are mostly either untrue, unachievable or unrealistic. In this election, there are just empty promises.

The Prime Minister is already associated with one of the most conspicuous falsehoods of recent British political history – the referendum campaign claim, printed on the side of a bus, that £350m a week could be diverted from EU budgets to the NHS.

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Now, 50,000 more nurses? More deception. That figure is made up of 14,000 trainees, 12,500 overseas recruits and 5,000 from the nursing apprenticeship scheme. The rest would be by retaining 18,500 nurses, through flexible working offers, who otherwise would have left the NHS.

In the run-up to the 2015 general election, then health secretary Jeremy Hunt promised an extra 5,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) GPs by 2020 – a promise that did not materialise.

Now, an empty promise of an extra 6,000 GPs by the Tories. Have they found a magic tree that grows GPs?

When it comes to NHS funding, Johnson and his ministers have touted a misleading figure for how much funding the Conservatives have promised for the NHS. The figure of £34bn they are citing is the difference between the current figure of £115bn and £149bn planned for 2023-24, but in real terms, the increase is much lower due to the effect of inflation.

The Tory ‘reforms’ of the NHS since they came to power in 2010 not only repealed society’s contract with the health service and the Government’s duty to provide fit-for-purpose healthcare – they put the NHS on the chopping block to be sold in pieces to private corporations. Johnson is promising that we are not privatising the NHS. But he has served in the governments that have systematically opened up the NHS to privatisation, deprived it of vital funding, and inflicted top-down disruption on patients and health workers.

The Tories had nearly 10 years to fix the NHS but what they have delivered is nothing short of car crash.

The NHS is now short of 100,000 staff. The Tories have said they would recruit more GPs last time, but we actually now have fewer. They promised 40 ‘new’ hospitals that turned out to be funding for six upgraded ones. After more than nine years of experiencing this government running our NHS into the ground, I can’t possibly believe Johnson’s manifesto spin now. And my NHS patients deserve so much better. What was actually delivered is a catastrophic shortfall of 44,000 nurses. Plus 9,000 missing doctors. An understaffing crisis that’s lethal for patients. And with a track record like that, why would anyone trust Johnson now?

Privatisation is an ideological luxury which wastes money and destabilises the NHS. It has no purpose other than diverting money to shareholders and enriching a privileged few. People should always come before profit.

All my life I have campaigned that it is a fundamental right to receive free healthcare at the point-of-need for all Britons. This right exists in this country regardless of your age, health, wealth, race and gender. But I think the views and policies of Johnson are a threat to that concept.

With minimal resources and a crippled system, my colleagues are struggling to provide essential services to the millions of British citizens. We have to change the system and I can’t trust Boris Johnson on this. I am sure the British electorate is wise enough to make the right decision when they vote.

Dr Kailash Chand is a retired GP and PCT chair. He was given an OBE in 2010 for services to the NHS