There aren’t ‘over eight million people’ on the NHS waiting list, as Peter Kyle claimed

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”.