NHS waiting lists are heading towards a staggering eight million, a minister admitted on Friday.Health minister Maria Caulfield told LBC Radio that the overall figure was expected to rise “slightly higher” than its current level.She was asked by presenter Nick Ferrari to give a commitment that the NHS list, for routine hospital treatment, would not go above the record 7.47 million at the end of May.
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00:00 Minister, can you give my listeners a commitment now
00:02 that the waiting list figure will not rise any further
00:05 from 7.47 million?
00:08 No, I mean, we know--
00:09 You can't give me that commitment.
00:11 We probably expect, in all honesty,
00:13 for it to peak around in the next few months
00:16 and will then start to come down.
00:17 But I suppose--
00:18 Sorry to talk over you.
00:19 Peak at what, Minister?
00:20 7.6, 7.7?
00:22 Where do you think we might end up?
00:23 I mean, we're almost at the peak,
00:25 but we think it will go slightly higher.
00:27 But it will then start to come down.
00:29 And that's why we're making announcements
00:31 like this right now, so that we are getting
00:33 that capacity and that infrastructure
00:36 so that patients can get their treatments more quickly.
00:39 But yes, we're being honest with people
00:41 that waiting lists, the total number,
00:44 will likely to rise a little bit more
00:46 before it starts to come down.
00:47 But it's how long people are waiting.
00:49 And that's the crucial matter, that waiting lists are--
00:53 in terms of time, are coming down.
00:54 And if you compare in Labour and Wales, for example,
00:57 they haven't managed to eliminate their two-year waits.
00:59 They've still got over 30,000 patients waiting two years
01:02 or more, where Labour run the NHS in Wales.
01:04 And our focus is on getting those waiting times down here
01:08 in England.
01:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]