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Today, BBC UK present, uncritically, the suggestion that waiting lists are falling at the same time as they’re getting longer, in NHS Alice in Wonderland:

BBC analysis shows more procedures and treatments are being carried out across the NHS in England, but still not enough to match the number of new patients joining waiting lists. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/l0057yrn

This is just another attempt (more below) by NHS England to fiddle the figures on behalf of the Labour Government.

The waiting list is the waiting list. Imagine BBC Scotland if NHS Scotland tried to blame the new referrals for spoiling Scottish Government attempts to reduce the waiting list?

The total waiting list of individuals in NHS England, as of November 2025, was 6 171 719.

^{https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/nhs-backlog-data-analysis}

All things being equal, you might expect the figure in Scotland, with one tenth of the population, to be around 617 000 but it was, in fact (ref below), 596 000. The NHS England list is 3.5% longer. In more meaningful terms, 21 000 more treated on time in Scotland and 240 fewer being treated on time in England. Try telling them it’s only 3.5%.

The waiting lists in Scotland?

At 31 December 2025, there were an estimated 595,591 individuals on at least one new outpatient, inpatient or day case waiting list. This is equivalent to around 1 in 9 of Scotland’s population (mid-2024 estimates).

^{https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/nhs-waiting-times-stage-of-treatment/stage-of-treatment-waiting-times-inpatients-day-cases-and-new-outpatients-3-february-2026/#:~:text=At%2031%20December%202025%2C%20there%20were%20an%20estimated,1%20in%209%20of%20Scotland%E2%80%99s%20population%20%28mid-2024%20estimates%29.}

Long waits?

The number of people in Scotland waiting more than a year for an NHS appointment or treatment has continued to fall, new official figures show., external Public Health Scotland’s latest statistics show the number of waits of more than 12 months fell from 78,000 at the end of October to just over 70,000 by the end of November.

^{https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg4ez4wzzd3o}

More operations carried out in Scotland too?

Between January 2025 and December 2025, the number of operations carried out rose by 5.6% compared with the previous year. In total, 274,638 procedures were delivered during this 12‑month period.

^{https://www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/articles/scotlands-nhs-waiting-lists-continue-fall-long-waits-dropping}

How NHS England have cheated before:

In October 2023:

NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.

Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe. How well or poorly A&Es are doing in meeting the 95% target is not in the public domain because the data that NHS England publishes is for NHS trusts overall, not individual hospitals.

That means official figures are an aggregate of performance at sometimes two A&Es run by the same trust or include data for any walk-in centres, minor injuries units or urgent treatment centres that a trust also operates. Forty-eight trusts have two A&Es and many also run at least one of the latter.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/28/misleading-ae-figures-in-england-hiding-poor-performance

In June 2022:

NHS England also had the dubious practice of restarting the clock after patients are admitted whereas in Scotland counting continues from first arrival:

https://gss.civilservice.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/UK-Comparative-Waiting-Times-AE-final.xlsx

And in June 2021:

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, in its call for a ‘Summer to Recover‘ campaign, outlines a series of recommendations to ensure that Emergency Departments do not become the system failure service this winter.

The above, from 4 key requests, will strike a chord with TuS regulars. For more than a year now, I’ve been reporting on NHS Scotland’s superior A&E performance and noting that the gap is almost certainly even greater because NHS England fiddles its data.

https://www.rcem.ac.uk/docs/Policy/Summer%20to%20Recover.pdf

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