Douglas Alexander misrepresents NHS waiting list data

Newly elected Labour MP Douglas Alexander claimed that “one in six of us in Scotland are on NHS waiting lists” on BBC One’s election coverage early this morning (1:49:50)—but this misrepresents the data we have to hand.

As we’ve said before about similar claims, this misrepresents data from Public Health Scotland which only shows the number of cases, not people, on the waiting list.

We don’t have the data to determine how many individual people are on the waiting list in Scotland, or what share of the Scottish population they represent. This is because some people will be waiting for more than one thing so may appear more than once on the waiting lists.

The waiting list for new outpatient and inpatient appointments, as well as key diagnostic tests in Scotland was 840,300 as of March 2024. That is between a sixth and a seventh of the estimated population of Scotland in 2022.

Survey data from the Office for National Statistics found 22% of people aged 16 and over in Scotland are waiting for something on the NHS.

Douglas Alexander—a former Secretary of State for Scotland—won the seat in Lothian East last night, returning to parliament after losing his seat in Paisley and Renfrewshire South in 2015.

We’ve contacted Mr Alexander and will update this article if he responds.

This claim was brought to our attention by our artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Full Fact's AI tools have spotted hundreds of misleading claims on social media during the election.