Tory manifesto costings have “black hole of billions”, says McDonnell

The Tory manifesto contains “fake news” and its costings document has a “black hole of billions of pounds”, Labour’s John McDonnell has argued.

Promises to build dozens of hospitals, establish a gigafactory for electric cars and create a new rail network are in the Conservative manifesto but not in the costings document released alongside it.

The costs of these policies add up to £52.2bn in added capital investment and an extra £20.6bn in day-to-day spending, according to the i, yet none of those figures were in the Tory manifesto published on Sunday.

The Labour Party says it has now found further missing billions from the manifesto, which pledged to invest in the Midlands Rail Hub and in ‘superbus networks’, as well as boost English language teaching, but did not set aside funding for the plans.

Labour has also pointed out that Johnson’s manifesto allocated £1bn for “completing a fast-charging network”, but the costings document only sets aside £600m for the project and ahead of the manifesto only £200m has been accounted for – leaving a shortfall of £200m.

Commenting on the findings, McDonnell said: “The Conservatives’ manifesto has austerity baked in and is missing any plans for the future of the country – especially the social care crisis which Boris Johnson promised to address.

“It also turns out that the costings document produced alongside it has a black hole of billions of pounds. With no evidence behind any of their figures, it looks like the Conservatives’ fake news approach applies to their manifesto too.”