The Tory candidate for London mayor has been slammed after he appeared to dismiss homelessness and the NHS funding crisis as "all hype".

Shaun Bailey was branded "tone deaf" and criticised by Labour's shadow equalities minister over the comments on his Twitter account.

Mr Bailey made the comments in a video he posted that showed him meeting a man named Louis in the street, and persuading him to see his point of view.

Louis said "people are homeless, people aren't getting help, money's going to places it shouldn't be going, the NHS is suffering".

Mr Bailey interrupted to say: "But all of that is hype!"

The comments come despite Theresa May branding rising homelessness a "national shame" after rough sleeping more than doubled under the Tories.

And there were 123,630 children in temporary accommodation last June, the highest number recorded since early 2007.

Meanwhile, councils say they have had billions of pounds slashed from their budgets in real terms and some medics say £20.5bn cash pot for the NHS will not be enough.

Shadow Equalities Minister Dawn Butler said: "I fail to understand why you dismiss the rise in homelessness and the NHS crisis as ‘hype’?

"When people are crying and threatening to commit suicide at my surgery it is far from hype!

"If the 'hype' is the pain and suffering there's only one way to move beyond it."

Several Twitter users also hit out at the video.

One, DKA_18, wrote: "This man called NHS struggles and Homelessness 'hype' and thought it was a good idea to put the video on twitter. Yikes. Tone deaf."

Another, Fiona O'Farrell, wrote: "This is the Tory candidate for London mayor. Dismissing a question about homelessness & lack of funding for the NHS as 'hype'. In his own video. That he's tweeted from his own account."

The government has set a target to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027.

Mr Bailey later clarified on Twitter: "We can’t believe the hype from people who say there aren’t solutions to the many problems we face, or that only one side has the answers.

"To beat them we have to raise our expectations and have the tough conversations – that’s what my politics is about, not cynicism on Twitter."

A spokesman for Mr Bailey told Metro the video was an "incomplete version of a longer conversation".

They added: "The point about hype was made in reference to the talk of the problems being the fault of one party of the other or that only one party can solve them.

"Shaun’s point – as someone who has been part of the 'hidden homeless' – is that we have to have a conversation free of partisan hype about our problems if we’re going to tackle them."

Mr Bailey – who will run against Labour's Sadiq Khan for London mayor in May 2020 – has a history of controversial comments to his name.

He wrote in the Telegraph in 2006 that "any young girl living in the inner city will be clued up on how the system works."

"They won't be too careful about not becoming parents. In some cases, they will deliberately become pregnant – as they know that if they do, they will get a flat."

And in a 2005 pamphlet, written for the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, he said immigrants to the UK had been allowed to “bring their culture, their country and any problems they might have with them".

He added: "What it does is rob Britain of its community. Without our community we slip into a crime-riddled cesspool."

At the time a spokesperson for Mr Bailey said the criticism of his comments was "ludicrous", saying it was a "bit rich" of opponents to criticise him when he himself had faced racist abuse.

They said: “As a descendant of the Windrush generation, and someone who has worked with diverse communities for over 20 years, Shaun knows full well the challenges faced by BAME communities.”

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