Johnson's promise to recruit NHS staff is more smoke and mirrors

16 DAYS TO POLLING DAY

Dishonest to promise more nurses under Boris Johnson

Lib Dems reveal that 3,250 NHS staff from the EU have left the health service so far this year alone including 1,116 nurses.

• It is dishonest to promise there will be more nurses under Boris Johnson's Conservatives. Our NHS has been consistently hit by the Conservatives' NHS and social care cuts, putting the lives of loved ones right across the country at risk.
• It is insulting to the public and all those who work in the NHS for Boris Johnson to celebrate the return of nurse bursaries. It was the Tories who scrapped them in the first place.
• What the Tories have actually promised at this election is to tax our nurses. By extending the Immigration health surcharge and immigration visa fee to EU health professionals, more and more of EU nurses will see little reason to stay here in the UK.
• Our NHS currently relies on 20,000 EU nurses, 10,000 EU doctors, and we've already lost more than 5,000 EU nurses in the last 2 years
• Over 11,600 NHS staff from the EU have left the health service in the three years since the Brexit vote, including 4,783 nurses.
• The Conservatives' treatment of NHS nurses and doctors from the EU has been utterly shameful. People looking after our sick and elderly relatives have been left living in unbearable uncertainty, and now the Tories want to clobber them with a nurse tax worth thousands of pounds to come and work in the NHS. This will make the severe staff shortages faced by the NHS even worse and patient care will suffer as a result.
• Labour's long running ambivalence over the EU and its willingness to embrace Brexit means more uncertainty for the UK and the NHS and just like the Tories, inevitably lower economic growth. Labour's plans to embark upon a huge spending programme (some now uncosted) including large scale nationalisation will inevitably mean the NHS having to fight alongside many other public services for a smaller share of the economic cake.
• A Liberal Democrat government will introduce a national NHS recruitment strategy and ring-fence £7 billion a year through putting a penny on the pound on income tax. Only the Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit and build a brighter future for our NHS and those who work in it.

The Dishonest Tory Manifesto

• The Tory manifesto is built on a lie: that Brexit can be implemented without causing years of chaos and damage to our economy.

• These promises are not worth the paper they are written on. Boris Johnson's Farage-endorsed Brexit deal would leave the UK £70 billion worse off, meaning less money to invest in our schools, hospitals and tackling the climate emergency.

• Boris Johnson completely lacks a vision for our country's future. We are facing huge challenges, from the climate emergency to poverty and inequality. Boris Johnson simply isn't interested in solving any of these issues. He is not fit to be Prime Minister.

• The Institute for Fiscal Studies said: "As a blueprint for five years in government the lack of significant policy action is remarkable."

The best way to build a brighter future is to stop Brexit, so we can invest the £50 billion Remain bonus in our public services and tackling inequality.

How do you build a #BrighterFuture for the UK?

⛔ Stop Brexit
🍃 Tackle the climate emergency
📚 Give every child the best start in life
🤝 Build a fairer economy
🏥 Transform our mental health services

This #GE2019, vote @LibDems https://www.libdems.org.uk/plan

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