Sir Keir Starmer confuses NHS waiting list figures again

On BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said “we’ve got 7.7 million people on NHS waiting lists”. 

This is not what NHS England data shows, as we’ve previously pointed out to Mr Starmer and various other politicians. 

There are actually around 6.5 million individual patients waiting for NHS treatment in England. 

But because some patients are waiting for more than one type of treatment to start, there are around 7.8 million treatment pathways that haven’t yet been completed. 

For a long time it’s been common to describe the number of cases on the main NHS England waiting list as the number of “people” waiting. But some people are waiting for more than one thing, so this was never quite right.

Then, in November, for the first time official data began to include an estimate for the number of individuals waiting. Both people and cases were at record highs—but now that we have an actual number for each, we think it’s important to use the correct one.

Over the last month or so we’ve seen these figures confused a number of times, both by politicians and media outlets. We’ve written about this here.

While Mr Starmer is yet to respond to us, we’re grateful to Labour’s Liz Kendall, Dame Angela Eagle, Tulip Siddiq and Rachael Maskell, who have all agreed to stop making claims that use the 7.8 million figure to refer to the number of people on NHS waiting lists in England.