Even the BBC cannot stomach Sir Keir’s claim to have met his measly target of only 2.4% more NHS appointments than in a period hit by 23 days of strikes – it looks more like a decrease in the light of those

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By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Chair Faculty Research Ethics Committee, UWS

BBC Health and BBC 1 are today reporting:

The government has met a key election pledge to deliver two million extra NHS appointments in England in its first year, the prime minister has said. The target was achieved between July and November last year, when there were almost 2.2 million more elective care appointments compared to the same period in 2023, the government said.

but, notably, even they, then point out:

That period was affected by doctor strikes, however, which would have suppressed the number of available appointments.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4z4vw3p1do

You can see in the table above, 23 days of strikes in the period being compared (July to November 2023). Given that, the increase claimed looks more like a decrease.

So, first, it’s dodgy stats so naked that everyone can see them.

Second, NHS England does around 353 million appointments/procedures in a year, around 90 million per quarter.1

So, 2.2 million represents a 2.4% increase.

How many doctor strikes were missed in Scotland? Well that’ll be NONE. See this for more detail:

52 days of doctors strikes averted, more than 100 000 appointments and 5 000 lives saved by Humza Yousaf but his removal is what Labour desire most
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2 thoughts on “Even the BBC cannot stomach Sir Keir’s claim to have met his measly target of only 2.4% more NHS appointments than in a period hit by 23 days of strikes – it looks more like a decrease in the light of those”

  1. Yes we all remember that the Doctor’s strikes was averted in Scotland, though that was not given any prominence in the news where we are, nor indeed was HY as FM or the Scottish Health secretary given any credit, in fact Scotland was the only UK nation to have avoided strike action by healthcare staff.

    This was what was reported by the BBC online on Scotland avoiding strike action by Healthcare staff:

    “When nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists took industrial action in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the Scottish government had already cut a deal costing £575m with unions that saw staff paid more than in other parts of the UK, with commitments to cut down hours and introduce legislation on safe staffing levels”.

    Note that when this was reported via this article online by the BBC they used the term “Scottish” government as this was positive news for Scotland.

    However when the same BBC choose to communicate what they promote as being negative news connected to Scotland they are often heard, via TV or Radio news, to refer to our government as being the “SNP government”.

    Keir Starmer , like Rishi Sunak and other previous Tory PM’s, all attacked what they said was the poor performance of the Scottish NHS and they all blamed the SNP, while all knowing full well that the NHS performances in both England and Wales had not performed as well as Scotland’s NHS.

    Rishi , when he was the PM, blamed Covid consequences and the Tory Health Secretary at the time also tried to blame the Doctors strikes in England for problems in England’s NHS.

    While Keir Starmer and the then Shadow Health Secretary both blamed the Tories as a UK government for the bad and poor decisions that they made on the NHS, which Keir Starmer & Wes Streeting then said had negatively impacted Wales and their NHS.

    Both Sunak and Starmer ignored the fact that both of the respective factors that they used as having negatively impacted their NHS services in England & Wales were then also significant negative factors that impacted Scotland’s NHS, which as negative factors, still saw our Scottish NHS perform better than the Tory run English NHS and the Labour run Welsh NHS.

    So as we often hear “The SNP have run the Scottish NHS into the ground” via opposition parties then what or who has done actually worse to the NHS in both England & Wales where the Tories and Labour were responsible for both of these NHS services ?

    I suppose that’s yet another case filed under ‘Wheesht for the UK’ .

    Liz S

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  2. Pingback: As NHS England faces strikes, Scottish Government enables higher pay deal for already better-paid Scottish nurses to once more prevent the loss of tens of thousands of appointments and to save thousands of lives – Talking-up Scotland [Collective]

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