Jeremy Corbyn has said Theresa May should have listened to the warnings of physicist Professor Stephen Hawking about NHS funding.
Hawking died, aged 76, at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Speaking during prime minister’s questions today, Corbyn quoted Hawking’s criticism of the Conservative government’s record on the health service.
Writing in The Guardian in August 2017, Hawking said: “There is overwhelming evidence that NHS funding and the numbers of doctors and nurses are inadequate, and it is getting worse.”
Corbyn asked May: “Does she agree with Professor Hawking?”
The prime minister said the government had put 13,900 more nurses on NHS wards. “We are providing record levels of funding,” she said.
“We are putting more money into the NHS but what you need to do that is to ensure you have a strong economy,” May said.
She added that a Labour government would cause a “run on the pound” and “crash the economy” which would “bankrupt Britain” and leave “less money for the NHS”
Paying tribute to Hawking, Corbyn praised the physicist as “one of the most acclaimed scientists of his generation”.
May praised Hawking’s “exceptional contributions to science and our knowledge of the universe”.
In January, Hawking won the right to take Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and NHS England to court over government health policy.