Labour MP’s claim that one in six Scots are ‘stuck on an NHS waiting list’ is not reliable

Labour MP Gregor Poynton claimed in a video posted on his social media accounts last week that a sixth of Scots are on NHS waiting lists.

But as we’ve written before, this figure isn’t reliable.

The best available estimate of the number of individual patients who are on NHS waiting lists in Scotland comes from Public Health Scotland. It says 578,804 individuals were on at least one NHS inpatient, day case or new outpatient waiting list as of 28 February 2026. That’s the equivalent of one in ten of Scotland’s population (based on the latest published population estimate, for mid-2024), not one in six.

At the time Mr Poynton made his claim the latest available figures were for 31 January—these estimated the equivalent of one in nine of Scotland’s population (586,859 individuals) were on at least one NHS inpatient, day case or new outpatient waiting list.

We’ve contacted Mr Poynton about his claim and will update this fact check if we receive a response. But it’s likely to be based on a calculation made by Scottish Labour, which we’ve heard make the same claim before.

The party previously told us it had come to the figure of one in six by combining waiting lists for outpatient and inpatient appointments and those waiting for eight key diagnostic tests (including colonoscopies and endoscopies).

But crucially this figure represents the number of total waits, not the total number of individuals who are waiting. Patients can appear on multiple waiting lists so tallying them up in this way doesn’t give a reliable figure for the number of patients. In fact, Public Health Scotland specifically warns these figures “should not be added together to determine the proportion of the total population waiting” in order “to avoid overestimating the population affected”.

Scottish Labour told us it considered Public Health Scotland’s figure to be an underestimate, as it doesn’t include patients waiting for a range of other NHS treatments.

It is true that Public Health Scotland’s figure doesn’t count those who are waiting for the eight key diagnostic tests,—and it also doesn’t count those waiting for adult and child mental health services, or appointments at allied health professionals-led clinics for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, chiropody, podiatry and orthotics services. So it is likely to underestimate the number of individuals on some form of NHS waiting list in Scotland.

However we don’t know how many individuals are on any of these other waiting lists. The figures for those lists are only for the number of waits, and they don’t include a breakdown of the number of individuals.

So Public Health Scotland’s estimate is the best one we have that avoids double counting.

We’ve heard the ‘one in six Scots’ claim before, from multiple MSPs and other Labour MPs, including the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. We’ve also written extensively about waiting lists south of the border, and the fact that the number of ‘waits’ for NHS England treatment is not the same as the number of individual patients who are waiting for treatment.