 Good afternoon, thanks for joining me. The mail on Sunday, they have called it an NHS gamble. May's £20 billion NHS gamble. Do you think it's a good thing? It's an awful lot of money, £20 billion is a big sum and people have been saying the NHS has needed more cash. We are seeing every winter there are problems in the NHS with problems with waiting lists, problems at A&E. I think a lot of people agree that the NHS does need more money, but now the big reason the mail on Sunday is saying it's a gamble is because obviously now the real rows begin about how that £20 billion is being funded. At the moment the government isn't spelling out exactly where that cash is going to come from and they're saying that will come later on in future budgets. So you're going to have the split of money, some money Theresa May says will come back, we will no longer be sending that to Brussels and that's obviously pleased Brexiteers like Boris Johnson this morning who's come out and said that's fantastic. Obviously he was very closely associated with that busting the referendum that said £350 million a week for the NHS, but obviously this sum is larger than that amount of money and so there will have to be tax rises or borrowing. At the moment Theresa May isn't saying how that's going to come, but as much as people say they want the NHS to get more money, people aren't so much agreed on how it should be paid for and people ask, do you say they're willing to have tax rises to pay for the NHS, but actually when it comes to that being money taken from their own pocket to pay for it, they may be slightly more nervous. Well Fran joins us, she's the Executive Director of Positive Money. Fran, what do you think about this announcement? Quite a cynical announcement and many people are calling it a bit of a PR stunt. I mean this £20 billion announcement comes after almost a decade of austerity of year on year funding cuts by the government. The NHS has seen a top-down reorganisation, the market and privatisation brought in, wages have stagnated, we have public sector pay freezes and so in a way it comes across very much as kind of insulting when you look at the actual crisis we're facing with the NHS, 100,000 vacancies and many more problems. Secondly, where's the funding going to go? There hasn't been much talk of social care and already some of the top people in the NHS are saying that's an issue. Obviously social care is funded by councils which have seen cuts through the decades of austerity and unless that we fund social care properly then people are going to be stuck in hospital and won't be able to get out. And I think the real thing here is where's this money suddenly coming from? They can't say that actually they've realised they've made a mistake, this economic ideology of austerity they've been going down has been wrong. The Theresa May and the government don't want to say that so instead they're making up a Brexit dividend which actually even her own MPs, I think Sarah Walliston said it's total tosh because she called the Brexit dividend and it's treating the public like fools. The point is there should be money to fund the NHS properly regardless of a made up figure from a Brexit dividend or not and that's the key question here and it's quite insulting to the NHS on it's 70th birthday to be playing such a PR stunt I think. John what do you think? Do you think it is a PR stunt using that term Brexit dividend? It's what everyone has jumped on. As you say, everyone says the NHS needs more money. This is what the Prime Minister is saying that she's going to give the NHS but it's this Brexit dividend that she's spoken about that has got the most press this morning. The other guest says it's a PR stunt and it's not appropriate to announce extra money for the NHS for its birthday. We're also saying the NHS does need money so I'm not sure you can have both of those things but obviously when we do leave the EU we won't be paying over large membership fees to the EU but at the moment we're still in the middle of negotiations. We don't know which EU things we're going to still be a part of which agencies we're going to still pay into and which ones we're not going to pay into so at the moment the government can't say exactly how much money will be there, extra money will be there after we've left the EU and obviously we don't know what will happen to the economy so it's a bit difficult for the government to put precise figure on what the Brexit dividend will be but we have to see. So do you think that they should have used the term Brexit dividend and said that they're going to use that Brexit dividend to fund the NHS to the tune of £600 million a week if they have no idea what the Brexit dividend is? Well I mean Theresa May has been under a lot of pressure from Brexiteers in her cabinet. She's got people there like Michael Gove, like Boris Johnson who have been saying to her we made these promises during the referendum and it's only right that the NHS should get some of that extra money so I mean we will find out later on further down the track how exactly it's split but I think it's completely fair to say yes some of it will come through the Brexit dividend some of it will come through tax and some of it will come through borrowing. Okay Fran what do you think it's completely fair says John? I mean I think that the point is we should be funding the NHS properly regardless of Brexit we don't know no one has any clue on any of the figures whether the UK will be a loss you know all there will be some kind of dividend but the point is is is putting these two things together just you know isn't right and it isn't treating the the public fairly you know for years we've been told there is no magic money tree and that's because of ideology because they're wanting to go through programme austerity when they could have been funding the NHS properly for the last eight years and they should be funding social care properly to then come up with this this you know this tagline of a Brexit dividend oh suddenly there is a magic money tree it's it's Brexit even though you know most experts I think the the head of the IFS said there isn't a Brexit dividend you know this is actually just being made when actually we could have been funding the NHS properly for the last eight years and so yes of course I wasn't saying that we don't want more funding we do but it's a little bit like somebody's been starving for eight years and give them a cupcake it's welcome but actually there are there are more systemic issues at hand and and the government I do think is is treating the public a bit like idiots by announcing this Brexit dividend and 20 billion when the when the crisis of the NHS and social care is much bigger and much deeper than than that amount of money will fix okay Fran boy John Stevens thank you so much for joining us one of the biggest events in the golfing after