Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Elective Recovery Plan, what progress his Department has made on the 18-week referral-to-treatment targets.

As set out in the Plan for Change and the Elective Reform Plan, we are committed to returning by March 2029 to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment.

We have already made significant progress on this. As of November 2025, the waiting list has reduced by over 312,000 since the Government came into office, and performance against the referral to treatment standard has improved by 2.9%, reaching 61.8%.

We’ve made this progress through setting ambitious targets, investing in modernisation, reforming and simplifying pathways, increasing surgical and diagnostic capacity, and empowering patients with faster and more convenient access to care.

This has been supported by the delivery of 5.2 million additional appointments between July 2024 and June 2025 compared to the previous year, more than double the Government’s pledge of two million. This marked a vital First Step towards delivering the constitutional standard.