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Theresa May Says NHS Could Receive More Than £350 Million Per Week After Brexit

During the 2016 referendum on Britain’s future in the EU, Boris Johnson famously toured on a bus where he promised to funnel £350 million of UK funds spent on the EU every week into the country’s National Health Service (NHS). He was widely berated for what many saw as an untrue claim. Now, the dreaded ‘350’ sum has returned in unexpected ways.
Sputnik

Theresa May has suggested that BoJo's notorious claim that leaving the EU will provide Britain's NHS with £350 million per week may not only be correct, but that the figure could be higher.

During a live phone-in on London-based LBC radio, the UK Prime Minister was quizzed by the show's host, Nick Ferrari, over the often cited figure, which is regularly pointed to by pro-EU remainers as a symbol of the lies and deceit that they feel animated the ‘Leave' campaign.

"So was Boris right?" asked Mr Ferrari after Miss May had initially tried to avoid engaging in discussions over the bus figure.

At that moment, May laid down a shocker, saying that in fact the figure is larger than £350 million per year.

​"It's £394 million extra that we will be putting into the NHS…per week" replied Miss May.

She then continued, "the point Boris was making was that if we don't send vast amounts of money to the EU every year, we can spend it on our priorities back home. The NHS is one of the things we can spend that money on."

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"But actually we're making a commitment, which is over and above that question of brining money back from the European Union because we know that the NHS is so important to people," she added. 

​A crowdfunded campaign to have BoJo prosecuted over the bus claim — which some felt was highly misleading — received tens of thousands of pounds in donations just a few days after the Brexit referendum result was announced in June 2016. The effort raised £24,000 of donations in just two days.

The campaign — known as ‘Brexit Justice' — brought on board a team of legal experts to judge whether the Brexiteer-in-chief had committed an ‘abuse of public trust' over his claim that Britain channels £350 million per week into Brussels.

Over and above, at that time the former Mayor of London and foreign secretary — who is sure to try and fill the conservative party's leadership vacuum if Theresa May departs office — was also given a finger-wagging by the UK's official statistics watchdog who slammed the figure as a "misuse of public statistics."     

READ MORE: ‘What was the Point of Leaving?’ May’s Brexit Deal Puts UK in Worse Position

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