UK Health Secretary Javid Denies Reports Treasury Delayed Plan to Tackle Patient Backlog

LONDON (Sputnik) – UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid on Monday denied reports that the Treasury has put on hold the publication of the government’s plan to clear the National Health Service (NHS) backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, blaming the Omicron wave for the delay.

"It is not coming today because we had a roadblock with Omicron", Javid told Sky News broadcaster.

He also noted that the backlog would get worse, saying that the "waiting list is going to continue to rise for a while until it starts to fall".

Earlier, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Treasury had refused to sign off the NHS backlog plan. The health secretary said, however, that he had planned to publish the recovery scheme in December, but "because of the Omicron, we rightly changed our focus to boosters (vaccines)", adding that the plan will be published "shortly".

Britain's Health Secretary Sajid Javid speaks during a media briefing in Downing Street, London, Oct. 20, 2021.

© AP Photo / Toby Melville

The publication of details of the NHS England scheme was scheduled for Monday. The Telegraph quoted NHS Confederation head Matthew Taylor, suggesting that the Treasury was "loath to agree to any No 10 plans involving money as the [Chancellor Rishi Sunak] sees these as opportunistic and wasted on a dying administration".

According to official figures, around 6 million people in the country were waiting for non-urgent operations and routine hospital procedures in November. At the same time, data collected by the House of Commons library suggests that almost 300,000 people were unable to see a cancer specialist within two weeks of an urgent referral between April and November - which is the highest number of 2-week target breaches in 11 years.