Health secretary Andrew Lansley has been criticised by the head of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) for insisting that the number of clinical staff in the NHS has increased.

Lansley’s claim that clinical staffing levels had gone up by 4,000 from 2010 was heckled by the audience and rejected by the RCN leader at the nurses’ annual conference yesterday.

The minister argued that while there were 3,000 less NHS nurses than in 2010, overall medical staffing numbers had increased because extra doctors had been recruited.

Lansley explained in his address that managerial and administrative posts had been lost rather than front-line medical roles.

“The number of staff in the NHS has gone down, but actually the number of clinical staff has gone up,” he said.

However, RCN general secretary Peter Carter said that the minister’s staffing claims were “simply not true”.

Figures released by the college yesterday estimated that 26,000 health service posts had been cut in the two years to April, while a total of 61,000 jobs – including nursing roles – were at risk of being axed.

The RCN study also revealed that just 6 per cent of 2,700 community nurses polled said that they “always had time to meet the needs of their patients”. Almost all of those canvassed had experienced an increase in workload over the past year.

The results showed that government plans to move care from acute hospitals to community settings were a “facade”, said the RCN, and that community services did not have the capacity to deal with a rising number of acutely ill patients.

Lansley also told nursing delegates at the Harrogate event that they had a responsibility to speak out if they had “a view that staffing levels are literally not safe for patients.”

But Carter said that in the past, whistleblowers had either been discounted or pressured to withdraw their concerns.

“In many hospitals where there have been scandals, people were speaking out but they have either been ignored or leant on,” he said.

Last autumn, the government announced that NHS staff who ‘blow the whistle’ on unacceptable care practises will be better protected from reprisals under changes to the NHS constitution this year.