Sir Keir Starmer and his health secretary, Wes Streeting, often trumpet the number of extra NHS appointments since they took office as an example of their success, but the figures tell a different story.
The prime minister today highlighted that four million additional appointments have been made in their first nine months in office – overachieving on their target of two million in a year.
But Sky News and fact-checkers at Full Fact have previously shown that the number of extra appointments is slowing under Labour, and our analysis of the latest figures shows that this trend has continued.
The four million extra appointments that Starmer describes is equivalent to an 8.0% rise since Labour took office. This is a smaller increase compared with the 10.6% rise under his predecessor Rishi Sunak during the same period last year, when five million additional appointments were made.
The rate of increase has also slowed since Labour took office.
As we reported earlier in the year, the government’s original target of two million new appointments was never ambitious – and exceeding it is hardly the boast the government claims.
Full Fact says the pledge “appears very modest”, adding “if [the government] achieved a rise of two million in its first year in office, it would be by far the smallest rise since the pandemic”.
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The number of appointments, currently in the region of 75 million annually across England, tends to increase every year, as the population size and level of demand rises.
So, increasing the number is not remarkable itself, but whether the pace of increase can meet unmet demand and help chip away at the long treatment waiting list is what really matters.
Two million extra appointments are equivalent to less than 3% of the almost 70 million carried out in the year to June 2024 – significantly lower than what has been achieved in recent years.
The prime minister also seemed to suggest that the four million appointments added was a record.
“At the last election a year ago, we promised two million extra appointments in the NHS in the first year of a Labour government.
“We have now delivered four million extra appointments and that’s thanks to your hard work and that of your colleagues.
“4 million. That’s a record amount for a single year ever,” he said at Thursday’s press conference, addressing NHS staff.
We put to the Department for Health and Social Care that this did not constitute a record, and they clarified that the prime minister was referring to the fact that the extra appointments contributed to the highest level of appointments in a single year – rather than the four million appointments being a record number of additional appointments, which would be inaccurate.
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We asked the government whether the prime minister’s remarks were arguably misleading, but they did not comment on this in their response.
Leo Benedictus, journalist at Full Fact, said: “While the total number of appointments may be at a record high, the actual rise in these appointments under Labour is significantly lower than it was the previous year.
“Historic data – which Full Fact had to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act – shows that while the government may hail the four million figure as a great achievement, the numbers have been rising at a similar rate for years.
“It still isn’t entirely clear exactly which sorts of activity the Government is claiming is at record level, because for these appointments alone that just isn’t true.
“No voter thinks improving the NHS is simple or easy, but in a time of historically low trust in politics, it is even more important that the Government is transparent and honest about their data and its significance.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
