Are one in six Scots waiting for NHS care?

Scottish Labour, its leader Anas Sarwar and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer have been claiming that one in six Scots are on an NHS waiting list—but the most recent official data available puts the figure at around one in nine.

Most recently, criticising the SNP’s record in government, Scottish Labour’s constitution spokesman Neil Bibby said that “one in six Scots is on an NHS waiting list” (11 October). Mr Sarwar made the claim back in May.

The Daily Record also appeared to repeat the claim at face value (13 October), saying one in six people in Scotland were “stuck on some form of NHS waiting list”. And The Scotsman columnist and Labour MSP Jackie Baillie (15 October) also used the one in six figure, and referred to those on the waiting list as being “in pain”.

Yet the latest figures from Public Health Scotland estimated there were 618,477 individual people on an NHS waiting list as of 31 October 2025.

That’s 11.15% of Scotland’s mid-2024 population (5,546,900)—closer to one in nine.

It’s true that Public Health Scotland’s count is incomplete, but it is the most reliable number we have.

Why is Scottish Labour claiming it’s one in six?

Scottish Labour has said it considers the official figures to be an “underestimate”. The party told Full Fact in June that their estimate is based on combining waiting lists of 559,742 outpatients, 158,436 inpatients and 142,747 diagnostics as of 31 March 2025. By their calculation, that would put the overall ‘waiting list’ at 860,925, equivalent to about one in six of Scotland’s population at that time.

But one person can appear on multiple waiting lists, so tallying them up like this isn’t a reliable way of estimating how many people are waiting for care. The number of ‘waits’ will always be higher than the number of individual people waiting (we’ve written many times before about similar confusion over the NHS waiting list in England).

In fact, Public Health Scotland explicitly warned about this in a previous press release, noting that “individual patients are counted more than once if they are waiting to attend more than one scheduled hospital appointment”.

As a result, “figures for the number of ongoing waits of patients waiting for a new outpatient attendance and those waiting for treatment as either an inpatient or day case should not be added together to determine the proportion of the total population waiting for these types of care”.

Public Health Scotland’s 618,477 figure, is an estimate of individual people on at least one waiting list, which means it accounts for patients appearing on multiple lists.

As Public Health Scotland explained to Full Fact last year, “an individual could be waiting for two separate new outpatient appointments for different conditions, or they could be waiting for both a new outpatient appointment and one of the key diagnostic tests for the same condition”.

Is Public Health Scotland undercounting?

Scottish Labour argues that both its own estimate and Public Health Scotland’s were likely coming up short on the true figure. Neither count includes patients waiting for mental health outpatient treatment, or people waiting for appointments at allied health professionals-led clinics for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, chiropody/podiatry and orthotics services.

This is a reasonable point to make. Public Health Scotland’s data only includes patients awaiting new outpatient, inpatient or day cases, and doesn’t include any data on the eight key diagnostic tests, adult and child mental health services, and gender identity clinics.

This is because the data for these waiting lists are aggregated—meaning they’re formatted at too high a level to count individual people across more than one list.

Waiting list data for appointments with allied health professionals is published separately. Waiting list data for return outpatient appointments isn’t collected at all due to “system limitations” and workload.

So there’s no official figure estimating all of the patients waiting on the various lists that Scottish Labour has named. And there’s no real way for us to guess at a true figure that considers every waiting list.

Simply put: Public Health Scotland’s estimate is the best we have that avoids double counting.

Full Fact has sent Scottish Labour’s methodology to Public Health Scotland, but the body has not responded.

We fact checked similar claims last summer, but the party is continuing to make the claim, and has been all year.

MPs and MSPs should use official information transparently and with all relevant context and caveats when a claim is first made.

We’ve contacted Sir Keir Starmer, MSPs Anas Sarwar, Jackie Baillie and Neil Bibby, and the Daily Record for comment.