Dear Ms Morgan,

Thank you for your letter regarding the Government’s claim of delivering 3.6 million additional NHS appointments in the first eight months of its term.

The OSR has verified the accuracy of the figure of 3.6 million additional elective appointments based on official statistics produced by NHS England, compared to the same period in the previous year.

On the question as to whether this represents a ‘massive increase’ in NHS activity, this is outside of our remit to comment on. We do not seek to be a mediator in political debate; however it is important that information is available that allows informed public debate. At the time the press releases you referred to were published, it was not possible to consider the scale of the increase in a historical context as the data were not available prior to July 2023. Given the importance of this matter, the OSR has engaged with NHS England and we are pleased to report that the data back to April 2018 have now been published.

You raised a concern that the Government had not defined how it was measuring appointments or what baseline it was using. The OSR reviewed the Labour Party Manifesto, the Government’s ‘Plan for Change’ and press releases, and determined that the measure of their target for extra appointments, which is defined in the official statistics as ‘additional elective operations, appointments and tests’, has generally been communicated clearly and consistently. In addition, the Government has been transparent that the target was to be measured against the previous year’s figures.

Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

 

Related links

Helen Morgan MP to Sir Robert Chote – NHS appointment statistics