Liberal Democrat spokesperson uses improved parliamentary corrections system to update claim about NHS waiting lists

The health and social care spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats has corrected a claim about NHS waiting lists following a request from Full Fact.

Full Fact’s AI tools detected Helen Morgan MP’s claim in the House of Commons on 18 December, when she inaccurately said that “more than 7 million people are on waiting lists” across England. After we contacted Ms Morgan, she submitted a written correction, which Hansard published yesterday.  

This is the first time an MP has responded to a Full Fact correction request by using the improved House of Commons correction system that we called for. Last year, following a campaign by thousands of Full Fact supporters, all MPs gained equal power to correct the record.

When Ms Morgan spoke in the Commons, the latest available referral to treatment data provided by NHS England indicated that the number of people waiting was 6.34 million. Several politicians and journalists have confused this data with figures for cases, which are higher because some patients await treatment for more than one thing, as our up-to-date explainer on NHS waiting lists shows.

We’re very grateful to Ms Morgan for making the correction.

Update: We’re also grateful to Kevin Bonavia MP, who issued a clarification to his claims on Facebook and X about NHS waiting lists after we contacted him.