Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress he has made toward meeting the NHS standard that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to start consultant-led treatment of non-urgent health conditions.

As of March 2025, performance against the 18-week standard was at 59.8%, a 2.6 percentage point improvement on March 2024 when it stood at 57.2%. The national referral to treatment waiting list is published monthly, and is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/rtt-waiting-times/

As set out in the Plan for Change, we have committed to returning to the 18-week constitutional standard by the end of March 2029. Planning Guidance for 2025/26 set a target that 65% of patients wait for 18 weeks or less by March 2026, with every trust expected to deliver a minimum five percentage point improvement on current performance over that period.

As an important first step to delivering on this commitment, we have now exceeded our pledge to deliver an additional 2 million appointments, tests and operations, having delivered 3.6 million more since July. We have reduced the waiting list by more than 200,000, so that patients get the care they need as soon as possible.

Our Elective Reform Plan sets out the productivity and reform efforts needed to return to this standard and includes measures such as widening the opening hours of Community Diagnostic Centres and launching and expanding 17 new surgical hubs so that patients are diagnosed and treated more quickly.