With less than two months to go until the end of the year, it seems safe to say that Rishi Sunak’s pledge to cut hospital waiting lists by the end of 2024 has been an epic failure: the NHS backlog hit yet another record high of 7.8 million in September, according to new figures out today.
This is up from the previous record of 7.75 million patients in England waiting to begin treatment at the end of August. It means that waiting lists have grown every month since Sunak made his pledge back in January that they would fall.
