Labour party chair repeats incorrect claim there are 7.8 million people on NHS waiting lists

26 January 2024

On Sky News this morning, Labour party chair and shadow women and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds MP said: “We’ve already got 7.8 million people on the NHS waiting list”. 

However, as we’ve pointed out before, this isn’t what NHS data shows. The latest NHS England statistics show that in November 2023, there were an estimated 6.4 million unique patients—so individual people—on the waiting list. They were waiting for 7.61 million types of treatment to begin, with some people waiting for more than one course of treatment. 

We’ve previously written to the Labour party, as well as other politicians and media outlets, and asked them to stop repeating this claim. 

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