The NHS has failed to cut waiting times as promised in its recovery plan despite billions of pounds in investment, the public accounts committee (PAC) has warned.
The influential parliamentary committee’s verdict raises serious doubts over whether Labour can fulfil its key pledge to voters to “fix the NHS” by ensuring that patients can once again get hospital care within 18 weeks by 2029.
In a scathing report, the cross-party PAC warns that improvements in providing faster tests and treatment have “stalled”. And it criticises Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, for ordering a costly, unplanned reorganisation of the NHS in England. It said this could damage care and was reminiscent of the shambles surrounding the HS2 rail project.
Far more patients than promised still have to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care – sometimes for more than a year – and more than six weeks for an X-ray or scan, it found. “Progress in reducing waiting times appears to have stalled, with the total elective care waiting list standing at 7.4m clinical pathways,” the report says – about 220,000 fewer than when Labour took power in July 2024.
The PAC’s conclusions will alarm ministers, who are keenly aware that the public’s top priority is to see NHS waiting times fall, and that Reform UK has recently supplanted Labour as the party that voters see as having the best policies on healthcare.
Its gloomy verdict contrasts sharply with the upbeat picture of progress in the NHS during Labour’s 16 months in power that Streeting painted last week.
In a speech to health service leaders, the health secretary insisted: “The NHS is on the road to recovery.” He highlighted that the waiting list for care within 18 weeks had shrunk by more than 200,000 since Labour won power; that ambulance response times were quicker; more cases of cancer were being diagnosed within 28 days; and that the NHS had 2,500 more GPs.
The Liberal Democrats said that the NHS’s efforts to banish widespread long delays for care were “a shambles”.
Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association charity, said: “The PAC’s findings lay bare what patients have felt for over a decade: despite billions being spent, the NHS is still not delivering the timely care people desperately need.”
The PAC analysed the progress of NHS England’s elective recovery plan, published in 2022 under the Conservative government, in which it promised to deliver much quicker waiting times by March 2025.
The PAC found:
Key NHS targets to improve access to both planned care and diagnostic tests by last spring “were missed”.
NHS England had spent £3.24bn setting up community diagnostic centres and surgical hubs but had not achieved the aim of reducing delays.
In July, 192,000 people had been waiting at least a year for care, despite a pledge to eradicate that practice altogether by March 2025.
22% of patients were having to wait more than six weeks for a diagnostic test, even though that was due to be cut to 5% by March.
Labour’s unexpected decision to restructure the NHS in England, which Streeting had ruled out in opposition, was not “prudent”, was decided upon despite no money having been set aside for it and no impact assessment done, and repeated “poor practice” seen with HS2 and the new hospitals programme, the PAC also found.
The PAC also sounded the alarm about the harm that delayed care could mean for patients. “Every unnecessary day that a patient spends on an NHS waiting list is both one of increased anxiety for that person’s unresolved case and, if they are undiagnosed, a steady increasing of risk to their life,” said Clive Betts, the committee’s deputy chair and a Labour MP.
Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem health spokesperson, said: “What a shambles. This report should set off alarm bells in No 10. The government promised to cut waiting lists, and yet their words are now proving hollow.”
Siva Anandaciva, the head of policy at the King’s Fund thinktank, added: “This report only adds to the steady drumbeat of evidence that the UK is lagging behind other countries’ health services in recovering from the [Covid-19] pandemic.
“Despite it being one of the prime minister’s top three priorities, the progress made and political will to make this a reality, the government is finding out that achieving it will be neither quick nor easy.”
Labour’s pledge to “build an NHS fit for the future” was one of the five big “missions” in its election manifesto last year to undertake if elected. Streeting and Starmer have stated that doing so would involve restoring by 2029 the guarantee – delivered under the last Labour government – of patients getting planned hospital care within 18 weeks.
However, reports by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Health Foundation and Institute for Government have cast doubt on the likelihood of that happening.
Streeting did not respond to the PAC’s report. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care defended Labour’s record, saying: “This government inherited a broken NHS, with waiting lists soaring and elective services in dire need of modernisation. This report focuses on the previous government, and we have taken immediate and robust action to tackle waiting lists and modernise elective care.
“For the first time in 15 years waiting lists are falling. Through record investment and modernisation, we’ve cut backlogs by more than 230,000 and smashed our target for additional appointments, delivering more than 5m extra. We’re delivering the change the NHS is crying out for.”
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