Wes Streeting may have jumped too soon to pose a challenge to Keir Starmer (which polls suggest is futile), but he got out of the hot seat as Health and Social Care Secretary at just the right time, according to the latest statistics.
His letter to Starmer claimed to have “delivered against the ambitious targets you set for me,” noting in particular the reduction in the waiting list, with March figures hitting the interim target of increasing to 65% of patients treated within 18 weeks of referral. Streeting claims this is in line with Labour’s promise to get back to the 92% standard by the end of the parliament.
Not everyone was bowled over by this achievement. Sky News pointed out that the 65% is an average figure, and that “this was achieved at the national level, but nearly half of trusts (71 of 150) did not.” Indeed, many more trusts performed much worse on certain specialities, suggesting that in many areas, the improvement may not be felt at all.
Questions have also been raised over the increased numbers of patients removed bureaucratically from waiting lists in the final few weeks to the end of March: others have noted that the monthly rate of improvement needs to more than double (from the current average 0.3%) in the next 39 months to lift performance from 65.3% to the 92% target by the time set.
But even more questions over the robustness of Streeting’s claims of success have arisen since the latest set of statistics show that the March figures were (as many suspected) a brief upward blip, which has been followed by a fresh decline, as the numbers waiting increased by 110,000, flopping back to slightly above the February figure of 7.2 million.
Another Streeting target was to reduce waits for emergency care, but these targets have been missed in A&E.
In March, 76.9% of A&E patients were treated or discharged within four hours, missing the interim target to hit the interim target of 78% (still far short of the 92% achieved through a decade of investment in the NHS in the 2000s). In major departments, the situation was far worse: just 63.8% of the most serious Type 1 patients were seen within four hours – compared with 97.5% of the least serious Type 3 cases.
But the April figures, released last week, are even worse: the overall percentage within 4 hours fell back to 75.9%, and just 61.9% of Type 1 patients were seen and treated within that timeframe. Only the most minor Type 3 patients were still close to the maximum possible speed of treatment, falling back just slightly to 97% – a level sustained since January.
The main A&E data was published alongside the first official data on “corridor care,” which the Times aptly headlined ‘NHS treats thousands of patients a day in corridors and cupboards’.
The figures showed an astonishing 3,000 patients per day suffering indignity and unsafe care in inappropriate environments, but the Royal College of Emergency Medicine immediately questioned the accuracy of the figures:
“This data reported that there were, on average, 2,241 patients experiencing corridor care on a given day in English Emergency Departments (EDs) in May 2026. On top of this, there was a daily average of 669 patients in hospital wards experiencing corridor care.
“That’s roughly equal to one in 21 ED attendances, significantly less than the results of RCEM’s 2025 survey of Clinical Leads in England – which found that on a given day in August, one in five ED patients experienced corridor care.” (emphasis added)
To make matters worse, the corridor care runs alongside a growing problem of trolley waits as seriously ill patients wait for a bed to become available. Data on ED performance showed that the number of patients waiting 12 or more hours in A&E before being transferred, admitted or discharged is the highest of any May on record – at 147,957.
Back in March, when the official definition of corridor care was published, the RCEM warned of the potential for this definition to lead to problems with counting, and to miss some incidents of corridor care: the first figures have revealed 30 trusts reporting either zero days of corridor care, incomplete data for the month, or no data at all.
And as NHS chiefs cranked up the pressure to speed up further the treatment of the 3% of most minor Type 3 patients who now wait more than 4 hours, the RCEM has bluntly warned that this is no solution to the problem of corridor care, and controversial proposals for busy A&E departments to tell patients with non-urgent ailments to come back another time are missing the point.
The RCEM, therefore, combines its welcome for the government’s commitment to ending corridor care by the end of this parliament with the blunt warning that it is still focusing “far too much on reducing attendances and diverting people away from EDs.”
“Corridor care is a symptom of overcrowding. It is not, for the most part, caused by the least sick patients.”
Measures to eliminate corridor care require a combination of more efficient NHS discharge of patients to free up beds for emergency admissions, more investment in community health care, step-down beds and other ways of supporting patients who cannot cope on their own after hospital care, and of course action to tackle the growing gaps in the dysfunctional largely privatised social care system, to ensure patients do not stay in hospital longer than they need.
Streeting knows this and knows there is nowhere near enough money in the kitty to make much of a dent in the problem. That’s probably one incentive to get out of the hot seat before the statistics start showing just how badly he has failed, and how seriously the NHS has been disoriented by the chaotic attempts to cut management and staffing costs, merge NHS England with the DHSC and other aspects of a 10-year Plan which still lacks any implementation plan, funding, or credible statement of final objectives.
Dear Reader,
If you like our content please support our campaigning journalism to protect health care for all.
Our goal is to inform people, hold our politicians to account and help to build change through evidence based ideas.
Everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, but our NHS needs support. You can help us to continue to counter bad policy, battle neglect of the NHS and correct dangerous mis-infomation.
Supporters of the NHS are crucial in sustaining our health service and with your help we will be able to engage more people in securing its future.
Please donate to help support our campaigning NHS research and journalism.
Wes Streeting may have jumped too soon to pose a challenge to Keir Starmer (which polls suggest is futile), but he got out of the hot seat as Health and Social Care Secretary at just the right time, according to the latest statistics.
His letter to Starmer claimed to have “delivered against the ambitious targets you set for me,” noting in particular the reduction in the waiting list, with March figures hitting the interim target of increasing to 65% of patients treated within 18 weeks of referral. Streeting claims this is in line with Labour’s promise to get back to the 92% standard by the end of the parliament.
Not everyone was bowled over by this achievement. Sky News pointed out that the 65% is an average figure, and that “this was achieved at the national level, but nearly half of trusts (71 of 150) did not.” Indeed, many more trusts performed much worse on certain specialities, suggesting that in many areas, the improvement may not be felt at all.
Questions have also been raised over the increased numbers of patients removed bureaucratically from waiting lists in the final few weeks to the end of March: others have noted that the monthly rate of improvement needs to more than double (from the current average 0.3%) in the next 39 months to lift performance from 65.3% to the 92% target by the time set.
But even more questions over the robustness of Streeting’s claims of success have arisen since the latest set of statistics show that the March figures were (as many suspected) a brief upward blip, which has been followed by a fresh decline, as the numbers waiting increased by 110,000, flopping back to slightly above the February figure of 7.2 million.
Another Streeting target was to reduce waits for emergency care, but these targets have been missed in A&E.
In March, 76.9% of A&E patients were treated or discharged within four hours, missing the interim target to hit the interim target of 78% (still far short of the 92% achieved through a decade of investment in the NHS in the 2000s). In major departments, the situation was far worse: just 63.8% of the most serious Type 1 patients were seen within four hours – compared with 97.5% of the least serious Type 3 cases.
But the April figures, released last week, are even worse: the overall percentage within 4 hours fell back to 75.9%, and just 61.9% of Type 1 patients were seen and treated within that timeframe. Only the most minor Type 3 patients were still close to the maximum possible speed of treatment, falling back just slightly to 97% – a level sustained since January.
The main A&E data was published alongside the first official data on “corridor care,” which the Times aptly headlined ‘NHS treats thousands of patients a day in corridors and cupboards’.
The figures showed an astonishing 3,000 patients per day suffering indignity and unsafe care in inappropriate environments, but the Royal College of Emergency Medicine immediately questioned the accuracy of the figures:
To make matters worse, the corridor care runs alongside a growing problem of trolley waits as seriously ill patients wait for a bed to become available. Data on ED performance showed that the number of patients waiting 12 or more hours in A&E before being transferred, admitted or discharged is the highest of any May on record – at 147,957.
Back in March, when the official definition of corridor care was published, the RCEM warned of the potential for this definition to lead to problems with counting, and to miss some incidents of corridor care: the first figures have revealed 30 trusts reporting either zero days of corridor care, incomplete data for the month, or no data at all.
And as NHS chiefs cranked up the pressure to speed up further the treatment of the 3% of most minor Type 3 patients who now wait more than 4 hours, the RCEM has bluntly warned that this is no solution to the problem of corridor care, and controversial proposals for busy A&E departments to tell patients with non-urgent ailments to come back another time are missing the point.
The RCEM, therefore, combines its welcome for the government’s commitment to ending corridor care by the end of this parliament with the blunt warning that it is still focusing “far too much on reducing attendances and diverting people away from EDs.”
Measures to eliminate corridor care require a combination of more efficient NHS discharge of patients to free up beds for emergency admissions, more investment in community health care, step-down beds and other ways of supporting patients who cannot cope on their own after hospital care, and of course action to tackle the growing gaps in the dysfunctional largely privatised social care system, to ensure patients do not stay in hospital longer than they need.
Streeting knows this and knows there is nowhere near enough money in the kitty to make much of a dent in the problem. That’s probably one incentive to get out of the hot seat before the statistics start showing just how badly he has failed, and how seriously the NHS has been disoriented by the chaotic attempts to cut management and staffing costs, merge NHS England with the DHSC and other aspects of a 10-year Plan which still lacks any implementation plan, funding, or credible statement of final objectives.
Dear Reader,
If you like our content please support our campaigning journalism to protect health care for all.
Our goal is to inform people, hold our politicians to account and help to build change through evidence based ideas.
Everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, but our NHS needs support. You can help us to continue to counter bad policy, battle neglect of the NHS and correct dangerous mis-infomation.
Supporters of the NHS are crucial in sustaining our health service and with your help we will be able to engage more people in securing its future.
Please donate to help support our campaigning NHS research and journalism.
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