The government was on Monday accused of "deception" by the Tories after it emerged that many of the proposed new nurses will be employed on a part-time basis.

A report by the Royal College of Nursing revealed that many of the 20,000 new jobs promised by the government in the NHS National Plan will not be full-time. The report was confirmed by the chief nursing officer.

Tory health spokesman Dr Liam Fox said: "Labour have constantly given the impression that they will be working full time. Now the government have been forced to back-track into admitting that they are nothing of the sort. To make matters worse, ministers don't even have the guts to give broadcast interviews - instead, they leave the Chief Nursing Officer to carry the can."

He added: "Labour have lied in previous NHS announcements, with triple accounting about funding and double counting of doctors. Now they've been caught out again on nurse recruitment. It is difficult to see how anything the government say on health can now be trusted. There is an increasing gap between the NHS that Ministers talk about and the real NHS which nurses work in and patients are treated by."

Nursing leaders, including the powerful Royal College of Nursing, have said they are surprised and disappointed by the news. They claimed that the only way the government will achieve their target is by improving pay and conditions.

Lib Dem health spokesman, Paul Burstow, said that the number of nurses due to retire over the next five years will add to the staffing crisis. "Poor planning under the Tories and Labour's failure to recognise the scale of the problem has meant young people have not been attracted into nursing. We are now in a situation where a quarter of today's nurses are set to retire over the next ten years."

He added: "The NHS is stuck in a vicious circle. It is a ludicrous situation when NHS trained nurses are leaving the UK for better paid private sector and overseas jobs while British taxpayers are forced to pay above the odds for agency staff and foreign nurses to make up the shortfall. The NHS Plan has failed to address the stark fact that without better pay and conditions, younger nurses will not be persuaded to join the NHS."

The Department of Health reacted angrily to the claims saying: "We are talking about the net increase of the number of people working in the NHS. The facts which we have made repeatedly clear to media and the nursing profession that our 20,000 target is a headcount figure.

"Our nursing progress report published only last month confirmed the headcount figure. We make no apologies for trying to attract part-time nurses back to the NHS. Trends show that almost all new nurses and overseas nurses are full time, and those coming back to nursing, especially after having a family, are mainly part time. It is good, modern employment practice, and it's a shame people are suggesting that part-time nurses do not make a major contribution to the NHS."