Tory MP defects to Remain campaign over NHS claims

Sarah Wollaston, a GP, says Leave camp was wrong to say that staying in EU will harm the health service

A CONSERVATIVE MP was last night preparing to defect from the EU Leave campaign following its claims that staying in the EU will harm the NHS.

In a major blow for the Leave campaign, Sarah Wollaston will today say that she now backs the case for staying in the EU, senior sources said.

The GP said her decision was due to the Leave campaign’s claim that Brexit would free up £350 million a week for the NHS, which “simply isn’t true”.

“For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue,” she told the BBC.

She added she believed there would be a “Brexit penalty” on the NHS.

Eurosceptic MPs accused her of “lacking credibility” by switching sides so close to the June 23 EU referendum.

Last night George Osborne said the battle over Britain’s future in Europe is a fight for the “soul of the country”.

The Chancellor used his first major televised interview of the referendum campaign to make an emotional case for remaining in the EU and attacked Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s “mean and divisive” tactics. Appearing in a BBC interview conducted by Andrew Neil, the Chancellor was accused of a “shameful” attempt to suggest that pensioners will be left unable to support themselves if Britain votes to leave the EU on June 23.

When challenged about the Government’s “project fear” tactics, Mr Osborne said: “You keep on saying we are scar- ing people. Frankly there is a lot to be scared about if we leave the European Union and risk our economy.”

In his most emotive intervention of the referendum campaign, Mr Osborne attempted to associate Mr Gove and Mr Johnson with a series of controversial comments made by Mr Farage in recent weeks. The Chancellor said: “There are a lot of scare stories about [Turkey]. Disgusting things said about bodies of migrants being washed up on the shores of Kent or about women being raped by migrants.

“Let’s be clear: this is a battle for the soul of this country. I do not want Nigel Farage’s vision of Britain. It is mean, it is divisive, it is not who we are as a country.”

Mr Osborne faced a series of questions about an advert from his Remain campaign which says that pensioners will lose £32,000 if Britain leaves the EU, accompanied by a picture of an elderly person holding an empty purse.

The Chancellor said that Brexit would cause inflation to rise, eroding the value of state pension increases, costing recipients £137 a year. Mr Neil pointed out that the state pension has been subjected to a triple lock since 2010, ensuring it rises each year by whichever is higher – inflation, average earnings or a minimum of 2.5 per cent.

Mr Osborne was also repeatedly pressed on the Remain campaign’s claims that Turkey will not become a member of the EU “until the year 3000”, despite it being the Government’s official policy to support the country’s accession to the bloc.

He said: “British Government policy is that Turkey should not join the EU today and it is a million miles from joining.”

Mr Osborne rejected the “fantasy” that leaving the EU would help bring net migration to below 100,000 a year as he was repeatedly pressed on the topic. The Chancellor claimed that 6,000 EU migrants had been deported from Britain because they failed to hold down work, citing figures for those found to have “abused” freedom of movement.

‘Frankly there is a lot to be scared about if we leave the European Union and risk our economy’