Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
55th Report - Reducing NHS waiting times for elective care
Published 19 Nov 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Reducing NHS waiting times for elective care All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
NHS England’s performance to date has not demonstrated that it can secure the clinical engagement that will be necessary to transform waiting lists. Clinical engagement has worked best when there been close working between national and local clinical leaders, and specific and expert support between peers. The diagnostic transformation programme and the surgical transformation programme benefitted from clinical leadership and the support of relevant Royal Colleges. NHS England recognises that this is central to securing change and acknowledged that it still has to work out how it can get better clinical engagement, particularly for the outpatients programme. While NHS England has now set new incentives and priorities, the scale of engagement necessary to achieve full clinical support for the outpatients programme remains a significant challenge. Some progress has been demonstrated by NHS England through other outpatients programmes such as the Further Faster 20 programme to reduce long-term economic inactivity, although formal evaluation of the programme by NHS England and the Department has not yet been completed. 4 recommendation The Department should set out what it plans to do differently to secure clinical engagement on the outpatients transformation programme to improve waiting times.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 55th Report - Reducing NHS waiting times for elective care (HC 820), 19 November 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifty-fifth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 19 January 2026).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirty-fifth report from Session 2024-26
Published 19 January 2026.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it agrees with the Committee's recommendations, and for most it says the recommendation is already implemented, with target dates for the rest.
- On diagnostic waits, it says the NHS Medium Term Planning Framework requires all systems to achieve the 1% standard for six week waits, with a plan for reaching it "by March 2029".
- On outpatients, it says it is "essential to transform outpatient care" to reach 92% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks by March 2029; further details "will be published in due course".
- On digital and data, it sets target dates: January 2026 for a single Planned Care Capital Assurance Board, and April 2026 for programmes to tackle digital maturity gaps, while acknowledging "the system is not where it needs to be".
- On unfunded announcements, it says it "will aim to ensure" announcements come with a delivery and affordability plan "wherever possible and appropriate", and that it will publish an impact assessment for the primary legislation on NHS England's integration into DHSC.