The rebuttal came after The Times said an 86,000 drop in waiting lists reported last month was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as ‘validation'.

According to the newspaper, the drop in waiting lists in November came despite 10% fewer operations being carried out.

The report said the Government had paid NHS trusts around £3m a month to remove people from the waiting lists who no longer needed treatment.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘This is not true. More than 85% of removals from waiting lists are a result of direct care provided to patients.

‘In addition to delivering 5m extra appointments, and funding GPs to treat more patients in the community, we are also improving the productivity of the NHS. The alternative would be to continue with the broken system we inherited, that saw patients waiting longer than ever in history and millions of wasted no show appointments.'

The DHSC acknowledged that 15% of waiting list reduction was down to ‘unreported removals', however, some of which was data validation and some of which was people who no longer required treatment.

The department said data for the latest 12 months showed the NHS was completing more than 55,000 additional pathways per month while removals through validation was only 13,500 a month higher.

It said the number and percentage of unreported removals was lower than 2019 (pre-pandemic). In November 2025, 85.6% of removals were down to reported activity, compared to around 80-81% pre-pandemic.

The DHSC said a large chunk of the unreported removals were people who had already been treated but not come off the list, therefore, was still activity.

It said only a very small amount was down to cleaning up data, eg a person being on the list twice.