Government reneging on promise to tackle NHS waiting times, claims Labour

06 January 2012

In November Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, pledged to bring in new rules to tackle the 250,000 "forgotten" patients who were not treated within 18 weeks of being referred by a GP.

Mr Lansley said because of Labour's "perverse approach" to targets, there was no incentive for health trusts to see these patients quickly once they had breached the 18-week wait. They were, he said, "languishing" on "hidden waiting lists".

He promised a "new approach", fining trusts which failed to clear patient backlogs quickly enough.

However, the Health Service Journal has now discovered that this measure it not contained in the 2012-13 standard contracts, which come into force in April.

Andy Burnham, the Shadow Health Secretary, said on Wednesday "We are losing count of the Government's broken promises on health, but this seems to be the quickest on record.

"Only six weeks after making this promise the Health Secretary has further undermined the already fragile confidence in his ability to run the NHS."

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "The Department of Health said they would tackle the issue yet instead of taking action they have just stuck to the same targets which have not helped these forgotten patients."

However, Paul Burstow, the Health Minister, described the accusations as "seriously misleading".

"There has been no delay", he said.

"Tackling long waiting times was one of the core new standards introduced in the NHS Operating Framework, the document that sets the goals for the NHS for 2012/13.

"But the fact is that many trusts have a large backlog of patients so we are giving the NHS time to clear it before we introduce fines for those who still have them."

Source: telegraph.co.uk, January 2012