Government Admits NHS Waiting Lists Will Rise Further Before Improving, Turns to Private Sector

On a morning of radio and television interviews, health minister Maria Caulfield said something governments rarely say about a record: it is going to get worse. The NHS waiting list in England stands at 7.47 million people, the highest figure since records began in 2007, and she told LBC's Nick Ferrari that it would likely climb a little higher in the next few months before it starts to fall.

Her words were plain. The list is almost at its peak, she said, but the Government expects it to go slightly higher. That, she explained, is why announcements are being made now: to get capacity and infrastructure in place so patients can be treated more quickly. The 7.47 million figure was published last month and covers the end of May.

The announcement itself centres on 13 new community diagnostic centres across England. Eight will be run by private operators and five by the NHS. The Government says they will carry out an additional 742,000 scans, checks and tests each year. The private sites will work much like their NHS counterparts and remain free at the point of need, but staff will be employed by the private operators, who also own the buildings.

In the South West, diagnostics company InHealth will run centres in Redruth, Bristol, Torbay, Yeovil and Weston-super-Mare. Other private sites will open in Southend, Northampton and south Birmingham, joining four already operating in Brighton, north Solihull, Oxford and Salford. The new NHS-run sites are in Hornchurch, Skegness, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stoke-on-Trent. The Government has pledged 160 centres by 2030; 114 are operating now and have carried out 4.6 million tests, checks and scans since July 2021.

The plans also loosen the rules on how the NHS awards contracts. Under the provider selection regime, contracts can be granted with greater freedom and without tendering. Speaking to Sky News, Caulfield said taxpayers would still get good value for money. Health Secretary Steve Barclay said every available resource must be used, and that tapping independent capacity would widen patient choice and allow major illnesses to be diagnosed sooner.

Other measures come from the Elective Recovery Taskforce, set up in December and chaired by health minister Will Quince. It will use data from private providers to identify where they could take on more NHS patients, and will look at using the private sector to train junior NHS staff. Quince said progress has already been made, with 18-month waits virtually eliminated.

Labour argues the Government is not going far enough. It claims 331,000 patients could have been treated since January 2022 if private capacity had been used. Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said nobody should be waiting in pain while hospital beds that could be used lie empty, and promised that a Labour government would use spare private capacity to see patients faster.

The backdrop is industrial action. Rishi Sunak vowed earlier this year to bring waiting lists down, but last month said strikes made the task more challenging. Junior doctors are preparing a four-day strike from August 11 in their pay dispute, and consultants are due to walk out for 48 hours on August 24.

Experts urge caution. Helen Buckingham, director of strategy at the Nuffield Trust, warned that the scheme must be carefully designed so the NHS is not left with the most complex cases without the staff or capacity to handle them, and that payments to independent providers need careful thought. More independent involvement will add capacity faster, she said, but it does not fix the root of the problem or give the NHS the resources to meet long-term demand. What to watch is how the contracts and payments are structured, and whether the list turns when the minister says it will.