Lies, Damned Lies, and Labour’s Statistics

Did you know that the Labour government is delivering on its promises to reduce waiting lists at NHS facilities? 

It’s true! The waiting lists are shrinking, and by dramatic numbers, too. In just one month, 86,000 fewer people were on those lists than the month before. 

Promises made, promises kept. Welcome to the “warmth of collectivism.”

Ministers are paying hospitals £3 million a month to remove patients from waiting lists, making it look like the health service is treating more people than it actually is.

Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in… pic.twitter.com/hu1xNKTOoq

— Jennifer Thetford-Kay (@JenKteach) February 2, 2026

Ministers are paying hospitals £3 million a month to remove patients from waiting lists, making it look like the health service is treating more people than it actually is.

Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.

Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”

But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.

Nobody likes being put on a waiting list, and the National Health Service is notorious for having ridiculously long waiting lists. 

Of course, it’s not the fact that our name is on a list that bothers us so much. It’s the waiting, actually. If we have a growing lump we’d like a doctor to look at or a hip that is failing and causing us enormous grief, we’d like to see a doctor tout suite, and unfortunately, it turns out, the actual number of people seen or operated on in the NHS has not increased—in fact, the numbers of procedures done has been falling. 

But the lists are shorter! 

Statistics show hospitals were in fact carrying out around 10pc fewer operations than in the month before, according to the newspaper.

Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, said ministers were taking credit “for progress that simply hasn’t happened”.

“Paying millions to NHS organisations for them to massage waiting-list figures is a shocking use of taxpayers’ money,” he told The Times.

“Without this cosmetic clear-out, waiting lists would have risen by hundreds of thousands since Labour took office.

“Patients are no better off, capacity hasn’t improved, and care hasn’t sped up. Once again it’s no plan and no ideas from this failing Labour Government.”

The fall in the number of people on the lists is a result of Labour paying hospitals to cull their lists, and has nothing to do with delivering more health care services to actual people. Some of the culling is arguably legitimate, such as removing the names of people who died while they were waiting for care (that’s one way to reduce the amount of health care you have to provide!), and some is done through pure manipulation—resetting the clock through changing the dates and times of appointments. 

One technique is they are playing a trick where they send you a letter saying that they have changed your appointment for a sooner more convenient time when in reality they have moved it by just one day earlier. Enables them to reset the wait time on the system. At the point the…

— TheBasicMind (@mind_basic) February 2, 2026

One technique is they are playing a trick where they send you a letter saying that they have changed your appointment for a sooner more convenient time when in reality they have moved it by just one day earlier. Enables them to reset the wait time on the system. At the point the letter is sent out your previous appointment is completed and a new one with a shorter wait time set up. This slight shuffling of people’s appointment dates has in some departments become the norm to give the appearance of hitting targets.

In other words, nobody is trying to measure the amount of health care services provided and improve that metric; they are focusing on an easily manipulated statistic and claiming victory because they manipulated it well. 

Best of all, Starmer is promising to reduce the waiting period to see a doctor to just 18 weeks in the next few years! 

For God’s sake. 

She told The Times: “Last month you saw what appeared to be a record drop in the number of patients on the NHS waiting list but at the same time there was no increase in hospital activity in terms of outpatient appointments or theatre operations.

“[That] raises questions about the extent to which validation is being used to reduce the waiting lists.

Another trick is to divert people from seeking care altogether by recommending other forms of treatment. Instead of seeing a doctor, why not try this or that? That way you can reduce the waiting list without providing actual care to people. And if the bureaucrats are REALLY lucky, the patient might die and not show up on a list again. 

And if you choose creamation, you can experience the “warmth of collectivism” one last time. 

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