Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on eliminating waits of more than 18 months for elective care.

Having met our target to virtually eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July 2022, we have now also significantly reduced waits of over 18 months, in line with the targets set out in the elective recovery plan.

As a result of the pandemic, the number of patients waiting over 18 months peaked at almost 125,000 in September 2021. Official NHS England statistics show at the end of March 2023 there were 10,737 patients waiting over 18 months, a reduction of over 91% from this peak.

As with the two year target successfully met in July 2022, we have always been clear that there will be valid reasons why a small number of patients may need to wait more than 18 months, and for the patients that are still waiting local NHS services are working hard to schedule their appointments in line with clinical advice as a priority.