Boris Johnson's pledge to recruit 50,000 new nurses is based on lies and is an insult to the NHS

The only way to solve the NHS staffing crisis is to stop Brexit and properly fund the health service

Boris Johnson has promised an extra 50,000 NHS nurses by 2025. Part of the package is a return to providing bursaries for nursing students, to support them while they gain vital professional qualifications. This might seem like a welcome proposal, until you realise the entire policy is built on sand, propped up with deception and lies, and amounts to an insult to the brilliant and hardworking staff of the NHS.

Bursaries were axed at the insistence of the Tories in 2016, despite clear warnings from health unions, professional associations, and nurses themselves that this would be detrimental to the recruitment and retention of nurses.

Figures released by UCAS show that the number of people applying to study nursing in England has fallen by more than 13,000 since the bursary was scrapped. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) points out that the numbers of mature students applying has also fallen by 41%. They say there are about 40,000 nursing vacancies in England. The prime minister's pledge to reinstate the bursary is welcome, but merely rights a wrong, and does nothing to plug a three-year gap in recruitment.

Then there is the prime minister's flagship Brexit plan. The uncertainty and threat of economic chaos has already meant the NHS has lost 5,000 nurses from other EU nations. There has been a huge fall in the numbers of nurses from other EU countries coming to the UK to work for the NHS. This is hardly a surprise given the toxic political culture and sense that they are unwelcome.

Those that can be persuaded to come from other EU nations to support our NHS, as they have done since 1948, will be stung by the new Tory nurse tax. Each one will face a £464 NHS visa fee, and an immigration health surcharge of £625 under Conservative plans.

These extra charges will be slapped on nurses' partners and children too, so that a nurse with a family of four coming to the UK from the EU will be paying over £10,000 in their first five years working in the NHS. We're crying out for nurses to come and work here, and under these plans the government is pulling up the drawbridge.

The Royal College of Nursing's chief executive and general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair has already called the new fees “ridiculously short sighted”. She criticised the decision to extend the charge to EU staff “given the number of vacant nursing posts in the health service health and care system.” The Conservative message for the tens of thousands of EU nurses, doctors and other health professionals working in our NHS is now clear: you won't be welcome in Brexit Britain.

In 2015, the Conservatives promised 5,000 more GPs by 2020. By 2018, the NHS had 148 fewer doctors than three years earlier, and the pledge was quietly dropped. As we near 2020, the 5,000 extra doctors remain a figment of the Conservatives' imagination. It does not take much of a leap to imagine that the Conservative's promise of 50,000 new nurses will go the same way: a promise made in the glare of an election campaign, and shelved once reality bites. We won't be fooled again.

As Liberal Democrats, our plan is to stop Brexit and with it the nurse tax and other barriers to EU nurses coming to work in our NHS. We will kickstart a new national recruitment strategy to address the NHS staffing crisis, and we will work to retain the excellent staff we already have. In areas such as public health and mental health, we will make sure we have the staff we need, so that we can shift the emphasis away from acute care and towards sustainable wellness.

We will fund the NHS through an extra penny on income tax, which will see an extra £7 billion a year. Stop Brexit, rebuild the NHS – it's as straightforward as that.