Vote Leave’s claim today that leaving the EU would boost NHS funding ignores how many leading members of the organisation have long wanted to destroy the health service. It’s another sign of the hypocrisy and opportunism at the heart of the right-wing Leave campaigns.
Reacting to the claim that leaving the EU would ‘save the NHS’, Amelia Womack, the Green Party deputy leader and Another Europe is Possible spokesperson, said:
“You only need to glance at Vote Leave’s supporters to see that they are no friends of the NHS. On the contrary their leading members support the end of the NHS as we know it and the introduction of an American-style private health system.
“Take Daniel Hannan – the Tory MEP and Vote Leave Campaign Committee Member – who in 2009 told Fox News that the NHS was a ‘terrible mistake’ that Britain has ‘lived through for sixty years’.
“Now the same people are telling us that we can save the NHS if we leave the EU. This hypocrisy should not be believed and cannot go unchallenged.
“It’s the Tory government – not the EU – that is imposing £22 billion in cuts on the NHS and destroying morale amongst junior doctors.
“Our NHS urgently needs saving – but that means campaigning to protect services, supporting the vulnerable and, crucially, getting rid of a Tory government whose reforms will put lives at risk.
“The NHS is a precious institution, with brilliant, hardworking staff providing outstanding, world class, public healthcare. We can’t let it be endangered by a Tory government and their supporters amongst Leave campaigners.”
15th April 2016