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Susanna Reid catches Boris Johnson over false Brexit claim

Boris appeared on GMB this morning (Picture: REX/ITV)
Boris appeared on GMB this morning (Picture: REX/ITV)

Boris Johnson faced an almighty grilling on Good Morning Britain earlier today as he was forced to admit that the NHS will NOT get £350 million extra week after Brexit.

The Foreign Secretary backtracked on the claim, which was famously printed on the side of a Leave campaign bus, under heavy pressure from Susanna Reid.

The rocky appearance came on the same day that Mr Johnson was criticised for referring to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘mutton-headed old Mugwump.’

As she quizzed Johnson on the NHS, Reid pointed out that health secretary Jeremy Hunt had been on the show only a day previously and warned that a bad Brexit deal could cause the NHS to lose even more money.

She said: ‘He doesn’t back up that claim of £350million for the NHS and he’s the man in charge of the NHS.’

After repeatedly attempting to change the subject, Mr Johnson eventually conceded: ‘£350m is the global figure of what we don’t control… The net contribution is about £10billion a year.’

He added: ‘A certain amount of that, as I said until I was blue in the face, is spent at the behest of the EU in this country, about £175million.’

Responding to the interview, Labour MP Yvette Cooper wrote: ‘Incredible. Boris Johnson still trying to claim its £350m for the NHS.’

But despite the tough interview, Mr Johnson later proved to be on fighting form during a heated exchange on the Today programme with John Humphrys.

During the interview, Mr Johnson became particularly impassioned as he insisted that the UK would not pay an excessive sum to leave the European Union.

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He said: ‘If the negotations unfold in the sense that they say ‘we are going to have to have this money before we will have substantive talks on trade deals or whatever else it may be… that is obviously not going to happen.

‘Let me just make an obvious point to you, which I’m sure all your listeners will understand, there is no reason at all why the UK in my view should be paying huge sums of money in the long term for trading with the rest of European Union.’