Record-breaking NHS waiting lists will go even higher, a Tory health minister has admitted.
Maria Caulfield’s comments fly in the face of Rishi Sunak’s pledge to voters to bring them down.
The number of people currently waiting for treatment on the health service stands at 7.4 million - the highest figure in the NHS’s 75-year history.
In January, the prime minister made bringing waiting lists down one of his five key promises to the country.
But appearing on Sky News this morning, Caulfield said conceded that things will get worse before they get better.
After presenter Kay Burley pointed out the size of the waiting list, the minister said: “That probably will go up higher because we’re offering more procedures ... but the length of time people are waiting for their procedures is actually going down and that’s what matters to patients.”
She added: “There will always be people waiting for procedures, whether that’s out-patient procedures, operations and investigations.”
Burley hit back: “What matters is how many people are on the waiting list. You said that number, which is massive, is going to go higher. I’m asking you how high.”
Caulfield said: “We’ve always said after Covid, when routine procedures were shut down quite rightly to protect focus on Covid, we always said that waiting lists would go up before they start to come down.
″So it will go up before it comes down.”
Burley said: “If it is going to go higher, it’s reasonable to ask you how much higher it’s going to go. Why won’t you say?”
But the minister replied: “What’s important to patients is how long they have to wait, and in England we’re able to say to patients ’you’re not waiting two years, you’re not waiting 18 months, you’re waiting less than a year’.”
In January, Sunak said cutting waiting lists was one of the “five foundations on which to build a better future for our children and grandchildren”.
The other four were halving inflation, growing the economy, bringing down the national debt and stopping small boats crossing the Channel.
He said: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly.”
Sunak said his pledges were “the people’s priorities, they are your government’s priorities and we will either have achieved them or not”.
He added: “No tricks, no ambiguity - we’re either delivering for you or we’re not.
“We will rebuild trust in politics through action, or not at all. So, I ask you to judge us on the effort we put in and the results we achieve.”