Politics Live

An article about NHS England targets in the Times on Monday reported that hospital waiting lists “mean 7.6 million people are in line for treatment”.

As we’ve said many times before, this is not quite right. The 7.6 million figure refers to the number of cases on the waiting list, not the number of people.

In fact in the latest referral-to-treatment (RTT) data, which covers the end of September 2024, there were about 6.3 million people on the waiting list.

As NHS England explains in a note on its interactive report: “Each ‘case’ is an RTT pathway which relates to an individual referral for a patient. A patient can be on more than one RTT pathway at the same time if they are waiting for consultant-led elective treatment for different conditions or unrelated clinical reasons. Some patients will therefore be included in the figures above more than once.”

Our AI tools have spotted versions of this mistake more than 50 times in the past year.

NHS England’s RTT data doesn’t cover everyone waiting for any kind of NHS service, but it’s what people usually mean by “the waiting list”. Survey data collected by the Office for National Statistics last winter found that about 25% of adults in Great Britain were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”. 

We approached the Times for comment.

On BBC Question Time last night, skills minister Jacqui Smith, Baroness Smith of Malvern, appeared to repeat a claim we’ve already heard from the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said she wouldn’t reverse the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions. 

However, as we’ve already pointed out, there’s no evidence that Ms Badenoch said this. 

Baroness Smith said to shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake: “Your leader said she wasn’t going to reverse the National Insurance changes”. (While this isn’t perfectly audible, we believe this is what she said and have asked her for confirmation).  

Mr Hollinrake immediately replied: “That’s not what she said at all, Jacqui”.

Last month, when asked if she would reverse the policy, Ms Badenoch didn’t say if she would or wouldn’t do that. She said if something had been introduced in the Autumn Budget that “will obviously not work and will not raise any money, we will change that”. 

Later, she said “one of the first things that we’re going to be doing when we start our policy platform” is “look again” at employers’ National Insurance. 

We’ve written to Baroness Smith asking for her evidence for this claim, and will update this post if we receive a response.

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The Treasury and Department for Work and Pensions minister Emma Reynolds said on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? on Friday: “The situation that we inherited which is seven and a half million people waiting on waiting lists for operations.” [27:30]

This mixes up the number of people on the NHS England waiting list with the number of cases—a common mistake we’ve seen many times before, and which our AI tools have spotted at least 50 times in the past year.

In fact, in July 2024, the month of the general election, there were about 6.4 million people on the waiting list, according to non-emergency referral-to-treatment (RTT) data, in a total of about 7.6 million cases. Some people are waiting for treatment for more than one thing, so there are always more cases than people. 

Cases on the waiting list are also not necessarily waits “for operations”, as Ms Reynolds said. Although some people will be admitted for surgery, others may receive medicine, equipment or advice to help with their condition, or a decision might be taken to monitor their progress, or not to treat them at all.

NHS England’s RTT data doesn’t cover everyone waiting for any kind of NHS service, but it’s what people usually mean by “the waiting list”. Survey data collected by the Office for National Statistics last winter found that about 25% of adults in Great Britain were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”. 

We approached Ms Reynolds for comment.

We’ve seen some confusion online following Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s claim today that “spiking will be made a criminal offence”, with some commentators saying this is already the case or accusing him of “sloppy and misleading” wording.

‘Spiking’ involves adding either alcohol or drugs to drinks without the drinker’s knowledge or consent (‘drink spiking’), or injecting someone with drugs or another substance without their knowledge or consent (‘needle spiking’).

As this Home Office fact sheet from last December makes clear, spiking is already a crime. The government’s announcement today suggests that spiking will become a specific offence—though that wasn’t made clear in Mr Starmer’s post on X.

Currently spiking may be prosecuted under a number of existing laws, including:

• Offences against the Person Act 1861
• Sexual Offences Act 2003
• Criminal Justice Act 1988.

However, none of these laws include a specific offence of ‘spiking’ or appear to directly use the term. Instead, spiking can currently be prosecuted under a number of broader offences, such as “maliciously administering poison” so as to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm or “administering a substance with intent” to engage in a non-consensual sexual activity.

Speaking to ITN, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls Jess Phillips MP said: “Currently spiking sits across various different pieces of legislation and isn’t necessarily that easy to spot and also charge in criminal law, so we’re going to introduce a new crime of spiking.”

In response to claims that difficulties in tackling spiking did not stem from inadequate legislation, Ms Phillips told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [starts 1:36:00] that “new legislation in and of itself won’t necessarily change anything” but that the government was also announcing changes to the way police and bar staff deal with spiking incidents.

In a report on spiking published in December 2023 the previous government decided not to create a new “bespoke” offence, but did commit to amending its Criminal Justice Bill to “modernise the language of the current offence(s) which may help increase public awareness of the illegality of spiking and encourage the reporting of such incidents”.

These changes were introduced in January 2024, but the Bill did not pass ahead of the general election.

An article in the Independent today said: “During World War 1, parts of the UK’s countryside were destroyed amid bombing and fighting. But bright red poppies flourished in the muddy fields and inspired a poem by Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.”

The article goes on to say that this poem, In Flanders Fields, inspired the adoption of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

This is correct, according to the Royal British Legion, except of course the poem is not about fighting in the UK countryside, but in Flanders, which is part of Belgium. (Others made this point on social media.)

Although the UK was one of the belligerents, and thousands of people in the UK were killed or wounded in air raids, the first world war was primarily fought in other countries.

The Independent quickly corrected the article following contact from Full Fact.

Josh MacAlister is the first MP newly elected in 2024 to correct an error following a request from Full Fact.

Full Fact’s AI tools detected a message on Mr MacAlister’s Facebook page on 29 October that inaccurately said “over 7.5 million people” were waiting for NHS treatment when the Conservatives left office. After we contacted Mr MacAlister, he corrected the figure.

According to data provided by NHS England, there were 7.6 million cases involving about 6.4 million people waiting for treatment when the Conservatives left office. Some patients await treatment for more than one thing, as our explainer on NHS waiting lists shows.

Our AI has detected over 50 claims confusing waiting lists data on patients and cases in the last year.

We’re very grateful to Mr MacAlister for making the correction.

Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a complaint to the US Federal Election Commission (FEC), in response to reports of current and former Labour party staff preparing to campaign in support of Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ahead of the upcoming US presidential election.

The letter from Mr Trump’s campaign calls for “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election in the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris”.

It comes after Labour’s head of operations reportedly wrote in a LinkedIn post (since deleted) that “nearly 100 Labour party staff, current and former” were heading to the US to campaign in swing states ahead of the election on 5 November. The post reportedly said there were 10 “spots available” for additional volunteers, adding “we will sort your housing”.

Labour has said that the party did not fund any of the trips. At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said: “People in their own time often go and campaign, and that’s what we have seen. It happens in all political parties.”

What are the rules on foreign involvement in US elections?

The FEC, which oversees all US elections, states that foreign nationals (with the exception of green card holders) may not make donations in connection with any federal, state or local election in the US. Foreign nationals are also prohibited from influencing decision making in election-related activities.

The FEC defines a foreign national as either an individual who is not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, or a “foreign principal”, which includes foreign governments and political parties, as well as businesses and organisations whose principal place of business is not in the US.

It is also against US law to knowingly accept donations or contributions from a foreign national.

However, the FEC also states that foreign nationals “may participate in campaign activities as an uncompensated volunteer”, as long as they are not involved in the decision making process of a campaign. 

As has been reported elsewhere, FEC rules also state that individuals “may voluntarily spend up to $1,000 for unreimbursed transportation expenses on behalf of the campaign”, but that travel costs above $1,000 may be considered a contribution (which foreign nationals are prohibited from making). There’s no limit to the amount a volunteer can spend on their own food and housing, though these expenses must be “incidental to volunteer activity”.

In an interview on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, the science, innovation and technology secretary Peter Kyle, said: “Currently we have over eight million people waiting for treatment on the NHS.”

His department later told us that he was rounding up the 7.6 million headline figure on the referral to treatment (RTT) waiting list for NHS England.

Firstly, rounding up 7.6 million doesn’t make it “over” eight million.

Secondly, as we’ve said many times, this figure refers to the number of cases where someone is awaiting treatment—not the number of patients waiting. Some patients need treatment for more than one thing, which is why there are always more cases than patients.

The actual number of people waiting for treatment in the latest available RTT data is about 6.4 million.

It’s important to note that the RTT data doesn’t count every example of someone waiting for something on the NHS. An Office for National Statistics survey between October 2023 and March 2024 found that about 13 million adults in Great Britain were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”.