Leave campaign’s ‘£350m a week for NHS’ pledge a mistake, says Farage

The official Leave campaign’s call to spend £350 million a week extra on the NHS with money saved from contributions to the European Union was a “mistake” and cannot be guaranteed to happen, Nigel Farage has said.

The Ukip leader was not part of the Vote Leave campaign which emblazoned slogans such as “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead” and “Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week” on buses and posters.

The figure has twice been described as misleading by the UK Statistics Authority watchdog because it referred only to the UK’s £19 billion gross annual contribution and did not take into account Britain’s rebate or money that comes back from the EU.

When these factors are included, the net cost was around £7.1 billion a year – or £137 million a week.

Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to guarantee the money would go to the NHS, Mr Farage said: “No, I can’t and I would never have made that claim – it was one of the mistakes that the Leave campaign made.”

Mr Farage went on: “It wasn’t one of my adverts.

“I think they made a mistake. They made a mistake in doing that.

“We have a £10 billion a year, £34 million a day featherbed – that is going to be free money that we can spend on the NHS, on schools, or whatever it is.”

On not being part of Vote Leave, he said: “You must understand I was ostracised by the official Leave campaign and did, as I have always done, did my own thing.”

_{Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Stefan Rousseau / PA Wire.}