You would think, listening to ministers this week, that the NHS had been fixed. NHS England is trumpeting a "huge moment" as the waiting list fell by more than 312,000 over the past year, the largest annual reduction in sixteen years, with around 450,000 fewer people waiting over eighteen weeks than the year before. Genuine progress deserves credit. But a victory lap is premature when the hard numbers and the calendar both tell a more sobering story.
Read the Small Print
In March, 65.3 per cent of patients were seen within eighteen weeks. That is an improvement. It is also miles short of the constitutional standard the NHS is supposed to meet: 92 per cent. Celebrating 65 per cent as a triumph tells you how far standards have fallen that anyone treats it as good news. More than a third of patients are still waiting longer than they should for treatment, in pain, often unable to work, while the government drapes itself in selective statistics.
The Strike Labour Can't Talk Its Way Out Of
Here is what the celebratory press releases leave out. The BMA's resident doctors are walking out again from 15 to 19 June, the sixteenth stoppage in three years. Industrial action in 2025/26 alone has already cost an estimated 171,776 appointments and procedures. Every one of those is a real patient, bumped down the list, while the dispute that caused it remains unresolved. You cannot bring waiting lists down with one hand while strikes push them back up with the other.
That this row is still running after a year in office is itself an indictment. Labour told the country it had a special relationship with the unions and could keep the NHS working. Instead the strikes grind on, the goodwill has evaporated, and patients pay the price.
Spin Is Not a Strategy
The deeper problem is a government that prefers managing the narrative to managing the health service. Picking the most flattering figure, announcing it loudly, and hoping nobody checks the strike calendar is not a plan. It is public relations. The NHS does not need another carefully worded milestone. It needs a settlement with its workforce and a serious reform of how it is run.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would stop treating the NHS as a political trophy and start treating it as a service to be reformed. We would cut the bloated layers of management that swallow money meant for the front line, and redirect it to doctors, nurses and beds. We would negotiate seriously to end the cycle of strikes rather than letting disputes fester for years. And we would judge the NHS by whether patients are actually treated on time, not by whichever statistic makes the minister of the day look good.