Boris: £350m claim we put on bus wasn’t high enough

VOTE Leave’s promise of £350million a week for the NHS when Britain leaves the EU was ‘grossly underestimated’, Boris Johnson declared last night.

The Foreign Secretary said the weekly gross contribution would rise to £438million by the end of a post-Brexit transition period. He insisted Leave campaigners were correct to offer extra cash for the Health Service on the side of the bus.

However, he conceded it was a gross figure and only about half the total could be ploughed into public services.

‘There was an error on the side of the bus. We grossly underestimated the sum over which we would be able to take back control,’ Mr Johnson told the Guardian. He said the UK’s contribution was already up to £362million a week for 2017-18 and would rise annually to £410million, £431million and then £438million by 2020-21.

This would be ‘theoretically the last year of the transition period’, he said, adding that the NHS should be the UK’s priority when extra funds became available.

Mr Johnson stood by the £350million claim last September in a 4,000-word

‘It was grossly underestimated’

essay laying out his vision for Brexit a week before the Prime Minister gave a major speech on the issue in Florence.

This sparked a formal rebuke from Sir David Norgrove, head of the UK Statistics Authority, who wrote to Mr Johnson to say he was ‘surprised and disappointed’ to see the claim repeated.

Matthew Pennycook, a Labour Brexit spokesman, said Mr Johnson was wrong to make the claim again: ‘He spent the entire referendum campaign standing in front of his red bus with a bogus claim on the side, and now he is saying the figure should be higher. The public really do deserve better from the Foreign Secretary.’

Eloise Todd, of the anti-Brexit organisation Best for Britain, said: ‘This is yet another untruth from Boris, a man who has become obsessed with the lie he slapped on the side of the bus.’

Mr Johnson will warn ministers this week there is no point in Britain leaving the EU if it remains a ‘rule-taker’ from Brussels. He is expected to use a meeting of Mrs May’s Brexit ‘war cabinet’ to warn against signing up to a Norway- style model with continued EU links.