NHS waiting lists falling but will stay above pre-Covid levels until 2030, IFS says

Length of time patients must wait for A&E care, diagnostic tests, cancer care and surgery will remain high, report predicts

The NHS hospital waiting list will be falling “consistently” by the time of the general election but will remain even larger than it was before Covid until 2030, a new report predicts.

In potentially good news for Rishi Sunak, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the waiting list for operations in England is expected to “start to fall consistently but slowly from the middle of 2024”, during the months leading up to the election, which is widely expected in November.