Responding to Labour’s announcement to end hospital waits for children within the next parliament Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said:

“NHS leaders will welcome and share the focus on preventing ill health, particularly for children so we can help to get people off to a healthy start in life. It is a big issue that is already prioritised by ICSs.

“But it is important to recognise that a direction to focus on reducing waiting lists will only help local teams to deliver it if it is backed up with more resources and more devolved autonomy to innovate and tackle the problem.”

“The next government should prioritise incentivising, measuring, and overseeing improvement of outcomes, not just outputs. This will help to shift resources to reduce the number of children who get ill in the first place, and so cut the numbers then added to waiting lists.”