“He can’t pull the wool over people’s eyes by claiming it's down to strike action. Patients, staff and the public deserve better.”
Rishi Sunak has broken yet another pledge, after new data this morning revealed that NHS waiting lists have soared by 400,000, a year after the Prime Minister pledged to bring them down as one of his five pledges.
Data from NHS England shows 7.61 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of November, involving 6.39 million patients. Although the latest numbers show this was around 100,000 less than the previous month, it is still higher than the 7.19 million waiting list in January last year, when Sunak made his pledge to voters to bring down NHS waiting lists.
The Royal College of Nursing said: “Data released today shows the NHS waiting list remains extraordinarily high, with 400,000 more waits since the prime minister pledged to cut the numbers waiting more than a year ago.
“He can’t pull the wool over people’s eyes by claiming it’s down to strike action. Patients, staff and the public deserve better.”
The Tories are once more failing on the NHS.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “Rishi Sunak promised to eliminate the longest waits by last summer, yet more and more patients are having to put their lives on hold for unacceptable lengths of time.
“The last Labour government cut waiting lists from 18 months to 18 weeks. We did it before and we will do it again.”
Sunak meanwhile is trying to convince voters that he’s made progress on the five pledges that he set out at the start of last year. The only one Sunak has met is halving inflation, which still remains higher than the Bank of England’s target rate of 2%. On the other pledges, NHS waiting lists have grown, the economy has stagnated, debt has risen, and the boats have not been stopped.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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