NHS satisfaction and waits can’t be compared throughout history

The Secretary of State for Wales, Jo Stevens, claimed earlier today that the last Labour government saw the highest patient satisfaction and the shortest waiting lists in the NHS’s history. In fact we don’t have comparable data going back long enough, so we can’t be sure that either of these claims is true.

Speaking on Times Radio on 20 August, Ms Stevens said: “The last time that we had two Labour governments in the United Kingdom, one in Wales and one in Westminster, we had the highest patient satisfaction in NHS history and the shortest waiting list times as well.”

We’ve fact checked these claims a number of times before, such as when Keir Starmer said it last year, and then again during his election campaign.

As we said then, we’ve not been able to find a consistent measure of patient satisfaction over the history of the NHS. The Picker Institute, who conduct research on people’s experience of care, confirmed that they are also not aware of comparable data covering both the last Labour government and the Conservative-led government that followed.

Public satisfaction with the NHS began to be measured consistently in 1983, and reached its highest point in 2010, just after the end of the last Labour government. (Although it’s unlikely the Conservative-led coalition that followed had significantly influenced the NHS by then.)

Likewise, we can’t say whether Labour delivered the shortest NHS waiting lists because waiting lists have been measured in several different ways since the NHS was founded.

Experts at the Nuffield Trust told us that they were not aware of any data that would allow a direct comparison of waiting lists throughout the history of the NHS.

We’ve contacted Ms Stevens and will update this blog with any response.