Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the 18-week waiting time target can be met.

The Government is committed to returning, by March 2029, to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment.

In November 2025, performance against the standard was at 61.8%, 2.6% higher than a year earlier. Since the Government came into office, the waiting list for routine appointments, operations, and procedures in England has now been cut by 312,369 despite 30.1 million referrals being added onto the waiting list.

As set out in the Elective Reform Plan, we’ve set ambitious targets, and are investing in modernisation, and reforming and simplifying pathways, increasing surgical and diagnostic capacity, and empowering patients with faster and more convenient access to care. We’ve made good progress, through there remains lots more to do.

We will empower patients by giving them more choice and control, reform delivery by working more consistently, and in many cases differently, to deliver more elective care, ensure care takes place in the right place, and implement robust and regular oversight of performance with clear expectations.

In September last year, we announced a new “online hospital”, through NHS Online, which will help to reduce patient waiting times, delivering the equivalent of up to 8.5 million appointments and assessments in its first three years, four times more than an average trust, while enhancing patient choice and control over their care. The first patients will be able to use the service from 2027.

We are investing £6 billion of additional capital over five years for diagnostic, elective, urgent, and emergency capacity in the NHS. This includes £1.65 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 to support both immediate winter capacity and infrastructure transformation, for instance new surgical hubs, community diagnostic centres, and beds to increase capacity for elective and emergency care.