NHS waiting times will not start to go down until 2024, Sajid Javid warns
8 February 2022, 14:08 | Updated: 8 February 2022, 15:00
Sajid Javid outlines plan to reduce NHS waiting times
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned the NHS backlog for non-urgent procedures will not start to reduce for another two years.
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Mr Javid said an estimated 10 million people are thought to have stayed away from the NHS during the pandemic and, despite the NHS's "exceptional efforts", there "is now a considerable Covid backlog of elective care".
He said NHS waiting lists should only start to go down by March 2024, and promised cut them to under a year by 2025.
"Assuming half of the missing demand from the pandemic returns over the next three years, the NHS expect waiting lists to be reducing by March 2024," said the Health Secretary.
"The plan sets the ambition of eliminating waits of longer than a year, waits in elective care, by March 2025.
"With this no one will wait longer than two years by July this year and the NHS aims to eliminate the waits of over 18 months by April 2023 and over 65 weeks by March 2024."
Mr Javid said patients who had been waiting longer would be offered "greater choice" and stressed the need for the NHS to "come together on a new national mission to fight what the virus has brought with it".
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Mr Javid said warned of a huge pressure on the NHS, saying "we don't know how many will now come forward" for elective care.
"We don't know whether it will be 30 per cent or 80 per cent", he said.
"Even if half of these people come forward, this is going to place huge demand on the NHS and we are pulling out all the stops so that the NHS is there for them when they do."
The Health Secretary laid out the scale of the backlog, saying 10 million people are estimated to have stayed away from the NHS for care during the pandemic.
Mr Javid said that despite the NHS's "exceptional efforts" there "is now a considerable Covid backlog of elective care".
He added: "1,600 people have waited longer than a year for care before the pandemic. The latest data shows that this figure is now over 300,000.
"On top of this, the number of people waiting for elective care in England now stands at six million - that is up from 4.4 million before the pandemic.
"Sadly, this number will continue rising before it falls. A lot of people understandably stayed away from the NHS during the heights of the pandemic, and the most up-to-date estimate from the NHS is that that number is around 10 million people.
"I want these people to know that the NHS is open. I want them to come forward for the care they need."
As well as reducing the treatment backlog, Mr Javid also pledged to restore the speed of diagnostics within six weeks to pre-pandemic
"Although over 95 per cent of people needing a diagnostic test received it in six weeks prior to the pandemic, the latest data shows that that number has fallen to 75 per cent," he said.
"Our aim is that we will get back to this, get back to 95 per cent, by March 2025.
"A major part of this will be expanding the use of community diagnostic centres which have already had a huge impact.
"These are one-stop shops for checks and scans and tests that will help people get a quicker diagnosis and there for the treatment they need much earlier on."
The plan has been criticised by the opposition, with shadow health secretary Wes Streeting saying it "falls seriously short of the scale of the challenge facing the NHS and the misery that is affecting millions of people stuck on record high NHS waiting lists".
"We've been waiting some time for his plan to tackle NHS waiting times, we were told it would arrive before Christmas, we were told it would arrive yesterday, and it's not clear from his statement today that the delay was worth the wait," the Labour MP told the Commons.
"There's no plan to tackle the workforce crisis, no plan to deal with delayed discharges and no hope of eliminating waits of more than a year before the general election in 2024.
"The only big new idea seems to be a website that tells people they're waiting a long time, as if they didn't already know.
"What we did hear was a series of re-announcements including some perfectly sensible proposals for community diagnostic and surgical hubs - we welcome those - but the secretary of state cannot pretend that they meet the scale of the challenge."
