MP corrects Facebook post about the NHS waiting list

25 March 2025

The Labour MP Mike Reader has corrected a Facebook post that mixed up the number of people and the number of cases on the NHS England waiting list.

Our AI tools found a post by Mr Reader on Saturday, which originally said: “When the government took office last July, there was a staggering backlog of over 7.6 million people waiting for essential treatment.” 

In fact, as you can see in our waiting lists explainer, the backlog at the end of July 2024 was about 7.6 million cases, involving about 6.4 million people—some of whom were waiting for treatment for more than one thing. (These were the same as the figures for the end of June 2024, just before the election.) Mr Reader corrected this yesterday afternoon.

This is a very common source of confusion that we have written about many times since NHS England began to publish an estimate for the number of people on the waiting list in November 2023. 

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