The Biggest Crisis In The History Of The NHS - Labour Background briefing

Thursday, 29 June 2023 16:00

On every measure, this has been the worst year in the history of the NHS 520,000 people waited more than 4 hours in A&E in May, 26% of everyone who attended an A&E department. 31,000 waited for longer than 12 hours in A&E for a hospital bed. Source The overall waiting list for NHS hospital care is 7.42 million - equivalent to one in every eight people in England, the highest it has ever been. ...Request free trial

On every measure, this has been the worst year in the history of the NHS

520,000 people waited more than 4 hours in A&E in May, 26% of everyone who attended an A&E department. 31,000 waited for longer than 12 hours in A&E for a hospital bed.
- Source
The overall waiting list for NHS hospital care is 7.42 million - equivalent to one in every eight people in England, the highest it has ever been.
- Source
The average wait to see a hospital doctor is 14 weeks. 3.1 million people who are currently on the NHS waiting list have been waiting for longer than the 18 week maximum and 371,000 have been waiting longer than a year.
- Source
One in five patients wait longer than two weeks to see a specialist when they are referred for suspected cancer - 49,000 people waited longer in April. Three in ten wait longer than a month for a cancer diagnosis (62,000 in April), and two in five wait longer than two months from referral to start cancer treatment (5,000 in April).
- Source
In April, 1,250,000 people waited more than a month for a GP appointment, despite the Government’s pledge for maximum 2 week waits.
- Source
1,600,000 people are on the waiting list for an NHS diagnostic test. 430,000 have been waiting longer than 6 weeks and 167,000 have been waiting longer than 13 weeks.
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In April, an ambulance took 32 minutes on average to get to patients with conditions like heart attack or stroke. The target is 18 minutes.
- Source

The NHS has been failing patients since before the pandemic

Service	Standard	When the standard was last met	Average performance over the last 12 months	Sources
Ambulance	Category 2 mean response time of 18 minutes	Outside first lockdown, not been met since introduced in 2017	53 mins	Source
A&E	95% waiting less than 4 hours in A&E from arrival to admission, transfer, or discharge	July 2015	71.2%	Source
Cancer Care	85% waiting less than two months to start treatment after an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer	December 2015	60.6%	Source
Hospital Care	18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment (for 92% of patients)	February 2016	59.9%	Source
Diagnostics	1% of patients waiting six weeks or more	February 2017	28%	Source

The NHS workforce

There are 112,498 vacancies in the NHS. This includes 40,096 nursing vacancies and 8,549 doctor vacancies.
- Source
Leaked versions of the NHS workforce plan says the health service is already operating with 154,000 fewer full-time staff than it needs.
- Source
650,000 operations and appointments have been cancelled due to industrial action in the NHS over the past seven months (source). Next month doctors will walk out on strike for seven days, and the Prime Minister and Health Secretary are yet to say a word about it.
Given there are already 40,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS, there would be enough nurses today if the Government had started training 15,000 extra nurses a year 6 years ago (3 cohorts taking 3 years to train)
Given there are 8,500 doctor vacancies in the NHS, there would be enough doctors today if the Government had started training 7,500 extra doctors 8 years ago (2 cohorts taking 7 years to train)

Sunak’s pledges

Rishi Sunak has promised to bring down waiting lists as part of his 5 pledges. There are now around 350,000 more people on the NHS waiting list than when he became Prime Minister.
- Source
The Government committed to 4 waiting list targets in the elective recovery plan (published in February 2022), two of which have since been missed (although the Prime Minister and Health Secretary say in interviews they have hit them):
- Eliminate waits of over 104 weeks (2 years) by July 2022. As of April 23, there are 523 people on the list who have been waiting that long.
- Eliminate waits of over 78 weeks (18 months) by April 2023. As of April 23 (latest figures) there are 11,477 people on the list who have been waiting that long.
- Eliminate 65 week waits by March 2024
- Eliminate 52 week waits by March 2025
- - Source
In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday 25 June 2023, the Prime Minister said ‘the NHS is treating more people than it has ever done’ (source 17:10 onwards). But the latest NHS statistics (from April 2023) show that treatment activity in NHS hospitals was 10% below the levels in April 2019.
- Source

Questions for Conservatives re NHS workforce plan

Under this plan, how many years will it take before the NHS has enough doctors and nurses?
Do you regret not doing this 10 years ago? If you had, there would be enough staff in the NHS today.
Waiting lists are higher than they have ever been. An extra 350,000 people are waiting for treatment than when Sunak became Prime Minister. What is your plan to reduce waiting lists today?
Doctors and nurses are walking out in their droves. Isn’t this plan just pouring water into a leaky bucket, if you don’t solve the retention crisis?
Next month will see seven days of NHS doctors on strike. This has been going on for 7 months. Why has the Prime Minister not spent a second in negotiations with NHS staff to end these crippling strike?