Cornwall Council's Cabinet member for health and social care was left with egg on his face after erroneously claiming that the head of Cornwall's health commissioning body had said that there was "plenty of money" available to the NHS in Cornwall.

Andy Virr, the Conservative councillor responsible for health at New County Hall who is also a consultant at Royal Cornwall Hospital, made the claim at a meeting of the council's health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee. Kate Shields, chief executive of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care System responded by saying "we will never have enough money in the NHS".

Dr Virr said at the committee meeting: "I won't speak for the ICS chief executive but I think I will not be misquoting her when I say she has said there is plenty of money in the NHS locally but we need to spend it wisely."

In response, Mrs Shields said: "The thing around money in Cornwall, we have £1.2billion to spend on health needs of our population, we need to work out what we are doing with that money and how we are using it to benefit those who have got the quieter voices in the places where people don't tend to find them.

"We will never have enough money in the NHS because there will always be something else that we could do and one job for me as commissioner is how we spend our money optimally so that our population get the best outcomes."

She added: "Whether we need more money, yes please we will have loads more. Can we use them for services, yes we would but the reality is that the allocations currently has us almost exactly where we need to be based on our population. But we have always got our hands out for more if central government would like to give it to us."

Councillors at the meeting were shocked when Cllr Virr made the claim that there was "plenty of money" for the NHS in Cornwall. And there were calls afterwards for the council to do more to seek more funding for services in Cornwall.

Speaking afterward Jayne Kirkham, committee member, and group leader for Labour said: "Today, we heard that ambulance delays in Cornwall are the worst in the country and that we have 133 people in our hospitals who could be at home. Our Coroner wrote last year to the Health Secretary to warn him that avoidable deaths are happening in Cornwall.

"The waiting lists for all treatments, but particularly those for cancer, heart, orthopaedic and neurological conditions have rocketed. Our local health leaders and staff are doing all they can to improve things, but it's a really challenging situation and our Health and Care Scrutiny Committee expressed its concern.

"We have had 13 years of Conservative cuts to health and care and we struggle to recruit and retain health and care workers in Cornwall, partly because we cannot afford to pay them enough. We are 46 beds short across Cornwall.

"But despite all that, the Conservative Cabinet member for adult social care on Cornwall Council claims that we have enough money for health and care in Cornwall. Cornwall needs politicians who fight for Cornwall, not ones who tell us we've got enough, when we patently haven't."

Liberal Democrat councillor and committee member Andrew George added: "Our NHS and care services are in their biggest crisis in their 75 years history. So, it's worrying for patients – including the scores in Cornwall who avoidably die because of capacity overload – that we have a Government-supporting health and care leader who responds with such complacency. He'll attack anyone who raises reasonable concern. But denies there's a problem with the resources going in."