Hello and welcome to our second election podcast. I'm Charlotte McDonald and I'm Ruth Alexander

and if you've heard our first one you'll know that more or less is Tim Halford and Ruth Alexander

have been invited on to Radio 4's PM programme with Eddie Mayer to do a daily fact check into the statistics

that are being bandied around by politicians during the campaign. Here are six of the latest topics that have come under our scrutiny.

Topic 1. Funding the NHS. In a second week of campaigning on Tuesday 7th of April, health care was making headlines.

The state of your health is of great concern to politicians who want you to vote for them.

But they all know that in order just to stand still the NHS will need to spend much more money

than it gets at the moment. Raising questions of where it will all come from. Taxes, cuts and other departments.

Last year a report by the NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens said the health service would need an extra 30 billion pounds every year

over and above inflation just to keep things as they are.

A Simon Stevens estimated that 22 billion of that 30 billion could come from efficiency savings.

The other eight would have to be new money.

Ruth Alexander from Radio 4's Morales has been running a slide rule over the NHS. Let's start with the basic Ruth

how much money does the NHS get?

It's a good question. The NHS is divided up by nation in the UK. In total the UK spends about 135 billion pounds on the NHS.

For a Westminster election we are arguing about England and the NHS budget in England is about 150 billion pounds a year.

Now the coalition has had a policy of ring fencing NHS spending.

So unlike many other departments, health has been protected over the last few years and has even seen its budget go up slightly in real terms over the course of the Parliament.

And yet the NHS has been facing a real squeeze. So how can that be?

Well the budget hasn't risen as much each year as it used to in the past for a start.

So from 97 to 2009 it rose by about five and a half percent on average every year.

In the past four years it's risen by more like 0.8 percent and the problem is we've got a growing population.

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