NHS on 'road to recovery', claims PM as he meets pledge to deliver two million extra appointments
16 February 2025, 22:43 | Updated: 17 February 2025, 06:47
Sir Keir Starmer has claimed that the NHS is on the 'road to recovery' after meeting a pledge to deliver two million extra appointments in England.
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But the Prime Minister says the government knows "the job isn't done" and promised further reforms to deliver faster treatment.
NHS England figures showed that between July and November 2024 there were almost 2.2 million more appointments compared with the equivalent period in 2023.
Some 62% of the additional activity was made up of outpatient appointments, 26% diagnostic tests and 12% elective operations.
The extra NHS appointments, delivered in part by extra evening and weekend working, means Labour's manifesto commitment for two million a year was met seven months early.
The Prime Minister said: "This isn't just about numbers. It's about the cancer patients who for too long were left wondering when they'll finally start getting their life-saving treatment.
"It's about the millions of people who've put their lives and livelihoods on hold - waiting in pain and uncertainty as they wait for a diagnosis.
"We said we'd turn this around and that's exactly what we're doing - this milestone is a shot in the arm for our plan to get the NHS back on its feet and cut waiting times.
"But we're not complacent and we know the job isn't done.
"We're determined to go further and faster to deliver more appointments, faster treatment and a National Health Service that the British public deserve as part of our plan for change."
NHS England figures last week showed waiting lists dropped for the fourth consecutive month to their lowest figure since April 2023.
An estimated 7.46 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of December in England, relating to 6.24 million patients - down from 7.48 million treatments and 6.28 million patients at the end of November.
The Government has announced an extra £40 million funding pot for trusts who make the biggest improvements in cutting waiting lists, with the money available for hospitals from next year to spend on capital projects.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said there were now around 160,000 fewer patients on waiting lists than when Labour took office in July last year.
"We have wasted no time in getting to work to cut NHS waiting times and end the agony of millions of patients suffering uncertainty and pain," he said.
"Because we ended the strikes, invested in the NHS, and rolled out reformed ways of working, we are finally putting the NHS on the road to recovery."
NHS England's chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: "Thanks to the hard work of staff and embracing the latest innovations in care, we treated hundreds of thousands more patients last year and delivered a record number of tests and checks, with the waiting list falling for the fourth month in a row."
But she acknowledged "there is much more to do to slash waiting times for patients".
This comes just days after an NHS trust was fined £1.6 million for "avoidable failings" that led to the deaths of three babies in 2021.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust pleaded guilty at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on Monday to six counts of failing to provide safe care and treatment in relation to the deaths.
Adele O'Sullivan was 26 minutes old when she died on April 7 2021, Kahlani Rawson died aged four days old on June 15 2021, and Quinn Parker was one day old when he died on July 16 2021.
The court was also told that "serious and systemic failures" exposed all three mothers, Daniela O'Sullivan, Ellise Rawson and Emmie Studencki, and their babies to significant risk of harm.
District Judge Grace Leong told the hearing that the "catalogue of failures" in the trust's maternity unit were "avoidable and should never have happened".
Family members cried in the courtroom as District Judge Leong expressed her "deepest sympathy" to each of them and said the trust they put in NUH to deliver their babies safely had been broken.
District Judge Leong highlighted "critical failures" in care as she said the purpose of the sentencing hearing, in which she was limited to imposing a fine, was to "ensure the trust responsible is held to account and meaningful steps are taken to prevent such failures in the care of mothers and their babies, while recognising the harm caused".
NUH, which is currently at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in the history of the NHS, is the first trust to be prosecuted by healthcare watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) more than once after it was earlier fined £800,000 in 2023 for failures in the care of Wynter Andrews, who died 23 minutes after being born at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham in September 2019.
The CQC says the trust did not ensure safe care and treatment due to a lack of adequate systems and processes being in place or not being appropriately implemented to ensure staff managed all risks to mothers and babies' health and wellbeing.
