The comment by Siva Anandaciva, interim co-director of policy, events and partnerships at The King's Fund, came at The King's Fund 100 days of the new government: what next for health and care? breakfast roundtable this week.

Reports have predicted the NHS will receive a 4% spending rise in the Autumn Budget next week. Asked by HM what impact this would have on waiting lists, if any, Anandaciva said: ‘Who know what is going to be in it [the Budget] but I would say there were some specific manifesto commitments to waiting lists, including extra funding for 40,000 more appointments a week so we would expect to see something specifically tied to those manifesto commitments.'

The policy analyst said ‘unless there was a ‘massive change to the fiscal environment', however, the Budget was likely to be ‘helpful but not game changing'.

Labour MP for Shipley, Dr Anna Dixon, said: ‘I am not going to be pre-empting Rachel's Budget next week but I would say is critical to waiting lists is what we have said in our manifesto on workforce whether that is gainng more mental health specialists but also sorting out industrial disputes because while we had a junior doctors' strike we were not going to be getting the waiting lists down. Regardless of the quantum in the Budget it is very clear that's the way we are going to be delivering on our manifesto commitment around waiting lists.'

Rachel Wolf, founding partner, Public First, said: ‘The big thing we have to talk about more is what is going to happen to the fiscal rules on capital investment because that is the big unknown which could dramatically change how the NHS works over the next few years. At a broad level, I think there is a general agreement that we have underweighted towards capital investment and management versus frontline staff over the last few years and reweighting that is likely to have a big impact.'