Sunak Misses Key Target To Cut Hospital Waiting Times

Rishi Sunak has failed on delivering his key pledge on the NHS, the health minister has admitted, as fresh statistics show any progress on reducing the health service's waiting list has stalled.

- REBECCA THOMAS

The prime minister had pledged in January last year that waiting lists would fall and patients would “get the care they need more quickly”.

But figures released yesterday show the situation is much worse than when Mr Sunak vowed to bring waiting lists down, with hundreds of thousands more people waiting for care since then.

Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, admitted that the PM had failed to deliver on his promise. She told the BBC: “I don’t think anyone could have thought that it was an easy promise to make and it was going to be easy to achieve.”

She added: “Of course we know there are people who are waiting, they’re in pain, they’re in anguish. We absolutely understand that.”

The official figures, released by NHS England, show the number of people waiting for routine hospital care was 6.29 million in February – the same figure recorded in January.

An estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out in February, a figure that has fallen slightly for the fifth month in a row but was described by the NHS as “stable” compared to January, after a change to way the list is counted.

Meanwhile, demand on A&Es hit a record high, with 1.46 million patients attending major emergency departments last month – the highest figure ever recorded.