86,000 drop in NHS waiting lists was due to a new miracle procedure, pressing delete
Labour have spend £3m of taxpayers money getting hospitals to not perform more operations on patients, which have actually dropped 10%, but deleting people from the list then claiming credit for it.
They say there are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and statistics. But even by the sleazy standards of Westminster, the latest revelation from the Department of Health is a masterclass in creative accounting, or lying as its better know to you and me.
While the government has been pasting all over social media how they have reportedly achieved an 86,000 drop in the NHS waiting list, a deeper look at the numbers suggests they didn’t cure the problem, or perform more more operations, they spunked £3m just deleting people from the waiting list.
Money spent on deleting not operating
According to reports surfacing today, including a damning analysis in The Times, the government has been paying NHS trusts an estimated £3 million a month to conduct what they call ‘validation exercises’.
What does that actually mean? It means instead of paying for more surgeons, more theatre time, or more hospital beds, our tax money is being used to pay administrators to delete names off the list to give them some gaslighting material.
The Incentive: Trusts were reportedly paid roughly £33 for every patient removed from the list through this validation process.
The Reality Gap: In November, while the waiting list supposedly plummeted, 10% fewer operations were actually carried out.
The Validation Loophole: Patients were removed for reasons as vague as “other options might be more beneficial” (like physiotherapy) or, in the most cynical cases, because they had simply died while waiting.
More bad news for the Department of Health
As if the waiting list scandal wasn’t enough, the news cycle today has been a relentless parade of institutional failure and bureaucratic bloat. Here is what else is hitting the headlines:
The £3.6 Billion Negligence Bill: A scathing report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has revealed that medical negligence is costing the NHS a staggering £3.6 billion every year. MPs noted that warnings have been ignored for 24 years, with the Department of Health failing to take any meaningful action while costs balloon.
The Postcode Lottery for ADHD: New data shows a massive wealth gap in ADHD diagnoses. Patients in affluent areas like North West London are three times more likely to get prescriptions than those in Yorkshire, as the NHS becomes heavily dependent on expensive private clinics that only the middle classes can afford.
Interim Chaos: In a sign of the deep-seated instability at the top, it has been revealed that 7 out of 16 executive posts at the Department of Health and NHS England are currently filled by interims. It’s hard to fix a broken system when no one is staying long enough to understand where the problems are and take action to resolve them.
Rishi was actually right for once
Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer promised us ‘change people can actually feel’ from the changes they will bring to the NHS. But for the millions still waiting in pain for months and years, including my elderly mother and ever loyal girlfriend, the only change is that their names might have been quietly deleted to help Labour perform better in the polls, meet a manifesto target and generate some weak social media content.
Rishi Sunak reportedly refused to pay for these validation schemes, arguing that trusts should be doing their own data cleaning as a matter of course. For once, he was right. Paying for removals instead of results is a cynical ploy to massage the stats while the actual delivery of care continues to stall.
The government inherited a mess, certainly. But trying to hide that mess under a very expensive rug of data validation isn’t leadership or any form of achievement, it’s a PR stunt at the expense of the sick, a £3m a month stunt.
Labour is again lying and manipulating the public. How long can this go on…