Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 March 2025 to Question 33086 on Health Services: Waiting Lists, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the findings of the recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies entitled Can the government achieve its 18- week elective waiting time target, published on 20 March 2025.

Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission and a top priority for the Government. The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out a whole system approach to hitting the 18-week referral to treatment target by March 2029, and will ensure patients get the treatment they need faster and improve their experience of care.

The Department routinely reviews and considers reports on a variety of topics to inform policy development.

Planning Guidance for 2025/26 sets out the expectation of progress towards the target this year with an increase to 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks nationally by March 2026, with every trust expected to deliver a minimum five percentage point improvement on current performance. We make no apologies for setting stretching ambitions for the National Health Service and have been clear on the productivity efforts and reforms that are required to get there. We are closely monitoring performance and will work to ensure that our oversight and delivery standards provide the right incentives to drive reform and maximise progress.

The Government is already making good progress on waiting lists, with the delivery of an additional two million operations, scans, and appointments, as a First Step. Since July, the waiting list has fallen by over 190,000, and we have seen significant improvements in getting more people diagnosed and starting treatment faster. We are also introducing funding for general practitioners to incentivise the use of Advice and Guidance, which is an effective way of reducing unnecessary demand into hospitals. We have implemented several innovative strategies to boost NHS productivity and reduce long waiting times, including the Further Faster 20 initiative, in which expert clinicians and managers are deployed into NHS trusts in areas with the highest levels of economic inactivity to get patients treated faster.