Labour Milestones Review: Clearing hospital waiting lists

Labour has placed fixing the ‘broken’ NHS at the core of its pre- and post-election political messaging, connecting this milestone intrinsically in its mandate; failure to improve the state of the NHS and the wider health sector would epitomise its governmental failure.

To prevent this, political messaging has been supplemented by policy. In the Autumn Budget, Spring Statement and Spending Review, the NHS and the Department for Health and Social Care emerged the real ‘winners’ with other departments picking up the scraps of funding left. Equally, in a June and July which saw strategies and sector plans published frequently, the 10 Year Health Plan was a key point of attention, taking large expansive steps hoping to revitalise the NHS through ‘major surgery, not sticking plasters’.

The dire state of the NHS is unequivocally clear, and Lord Darzi’s report, published in September 2024, found waiting lists at an all time high, up 200% since 2010. In 2020, there were 720,000 people waiting over 18 weeks for elective treatment. Following the pandemic spike and a steady increase since, in July 2024, upon Labour’s election, 2.85m people were waiting between 18 and 52 weeks, with a further 290,000 waiting over a year. This amounts to 58% of patients meeting the 18 week target, 34 percentage points shy of the milestone. Therefore, Labour’s challenge was and is still to inversely reflect this backlog, reversing the steady increase and going further to reach the 92% target, last met over ten years ago.

So far, as of May 2025, 60.9% of patients are waiting less than 18 weeks, thus, early signs point to a failure to reach this milestone, where the moderate improvements over the last year would reflect an eventual 75% rate, falling short of the target. Rebuttals to this will cite that the policies have had little time to bed in and are in the process of delivering the changes needed to innovate service, harness doctors’ capabilities, recruit new staff and tear through the backlog.

The 10 Year Health Plan sets out these changes. Firstly, one of the triad of core shifts is moving care from hospital to community. This involves reforming the NHS to the Neighbourhood Health Service, functioning as a one-stop shop for community-based care. This move, backed and called for by the sector, hopes to shift the culture of the operating model by directing the correct need and care into the community, freeing up NHS staff to deal with pertinent issues and tackle the backlog. Despite this, moving health to the community is nothing new, and has circulated health ministers’ discourse since the Blair Government. Thus, this calls into question, as highlighted by the Chief Executive of the Health Foundation Dr Jennifer Dixon DBE, whether ‘lessons have been learned’ from past failures. Further, harnessing technological innovation, another core shift, hopes to relieve the administrative burden placed on staff. Mechanisms such as the Single Patient Record, to store all patient data in one transferable place, should work to relieve staff of administrative duties and allow them to focus on providing care and working through the backlog.

Ultimately, as many large multi-year targets do, any improvements will have to be seen. But, with a clear mandate, health and care at the nucleus of Labour’s mission and clear policy put in motion, convincing excuses will be needed to explain any stalling improvements.

For more on how the Labour Government is delivering on its promises, read the Vuelio Political team’s take on its housing and policing commitments.