Jonathan Ashworth comments on new figures on the NHS waiting lists

“These shocking figures show thousands of additional patients are now waiting over a year in pain and distress for treatment and the figure keeps going up.

“Rishi Sunak could have used last week’s budget to give the NHS the funding it needs to bring waiting lists down and address the growing backlog for treatment. Instead, he failed patients by cutting NHS budgets and nurses’ pay.”

Ends

Notes to editors:

There were 304,044 patients waiting over a year for treatment in January 2021. This is up from 224,205 in December 2020 and up from 1,613 in February 2020 before the pandemic hit.

At the end of January 2021, 66.2 per cent of patients waiting to start treatment (incomplete pathways) were waiting up to 18 weeks, thus not meeting the 92 per cent standard.

The number of RTT patients waiting to start treatment at the end of January 2021 was 4.59 million patients