“Let’s not rewrite history,” said NHS England chief Simon Stevens – but Theresa May has tried to do exactly that.

She knows perfectly well that he said the NHS in England would need between £8 billion and £21 billion in order to sustain the service up to 2020.

Her claim that, by giving the service £10 billion over six years, she is providing more than was requested is a lie.

That’s £8.4 billion over five years – the absolute lowest end of the scale presented by Mr Stevens.

It takes no account of cuts to social care, closed walk-in centres, closed pharmacies, limited availability of GP appointments – all caused by Tory mismanagement.

More money than the NHS requested would be at least £22 billion.

And the fact is that Tory cuts to the English health service will amount to nearly £40 billion – including the extra £8.4 billion – by 2020.

Theresa May is a liar and should resign because her lies are threatening people’s lives. Jeremy Hunt is a liar and should resign for the same reason.

The claim: The NHS is being given more money than it asked for.

Reality Check verdict: The amount that the NHS in England is being given over this Parliament is at the bottom end of the range that it asked for. It doesn’t take into account the knock-on effects of shortfalls in other areas such as social care.

“We asked the NHS to work out what it needed over the next five years in terms of… the funding it would need,” Prime Minister Theresa May told Sky News on Sunday.

“We gave them more funding then they required.”

But NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens denied this on Wednesday.

Mr Stevens has made clear that when he mentioned the £8bn figure, that was the minimum amount needed just to plug the funding gap.

But this figure is not enough to keep pace with rising demand, improve services or accommodate plans for seven-day services.

Speaking to NHS leaders last June, he said: “Let’s not rewrite history.

“In the Forward View, we actually said that the National Health Service would need between £8bn and £21bn by 2020 in order to sustain and improve.”

Source: Reality Check: Is the NHS getting more than it wanted? – BBC News

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