Health secretary faces backlash after telling trusts the standards will not have to be met next year

Jeremy Hunt is facing a backlash from patient groups over his decision to let hospitals flout key NHS waiting time targets next year.

The health and social care secretary has told NHS trusts they do not need to meet standards that require them to treat 95% of A&E patients within four hours and 92% of people awaiting non-urgent care within 18 weeks.

Hunt axed the targets earlier this week in the 2018-19 edition of the mandate (pdf), which is the set of priorities and instructions he gives the NHS every year. He said he made the decision because “a number of hospitals [are] struggling to meet these core performance standards overall”.



His abandonment of the NHS’s two most totemic targets will force patients to suffer in pain as they face longer delays for treatment and could jeopardise their recovery, the Patients Association warned.

“Patients will have to endure greater periods of pain and discomfort while they wait for surgery or battle to access care, and run greater risks of poor outcomes. In A&E departments some patients will be waiting longer for admission to a ward in corridors with loss of their dignity and privacy, and risks to their safety. The risks for patient safety and poorer outcomes is completely needless, and unacceptable in a wealthy nation,” said Rachel Power, the charity’s chief executive.

Percentage of A&E patients treated within four hours at lowest ever level Read more

Hospitals have not met the four-hour A&E target since July 2015. And the number of people on the waiting list for treatment within 18 weeks, for example for a cataract removal or hip or knee replacement, has crept up to more than 4 million in recent months.

Patients are the losers from what is a decisive move away from their supposed rights under the NHS constitution, said Jeremy Taylor, the chief executive of National Voices, which represents more than 150 charities.

“The government is easing pressure on health and care services by putting pressure on patients. Rather than meeting the funding needs of the NHS and social care, it is diminishing service standards.

“The losers will be the many more thousands of people waiting for treatment in pain, discomfort and frustration – and with their health put at risk by further delay.”

The change had been made secretly, with no public consultation or public debate, Taylor complained.

Delays will accelerate the already growing numbers of NHS patients who feel obliged to pay for private treatment, Labour warned. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said: “Not only will [Hunt’s decision] mean people waiting longer and longer in pain for operations, not only does it breach legal guarantees contained in the NHS constitution, but fundamentally it risks the very future of our universal health system if it means forcing more to reluctantly flee the NHS for private provision instead.”

Hospital bosses want to meet the targets because they guarantee patients timely care, but cannot due to underfunding and understaffing, said Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts.

“This is not something trust leaders are comfortable with, particularly having worked so hard over a long period to achieve those standards by the late 2000s. They want the funding and the staff they need to carry on delivering those standards rather than see them slip away, however hard they work.”

Bosses fear that benefits in patients’ access that hospitals have delivered since targets were imposed in the 2000s are now being lost, Cordery added.