Written question WQ98685

Official NHS waiting times statistics for Wales and England are not directly comparable because of differences in the pathways in scope.

NHS Wales actively supports improvement through a range of benchmarking and comparative methods. These include:

• Internal benchmarking across Welsh health boards, allowing services to compare performance, identify variation and share best practice within Wales.

• Use of clinically-led specialty-level analysis, ensuring that differences in patient pathways and case mix are properly understood.

• Participation in UK-wide and international benchmarking where methodologies align, enabling learning while respecting statistical differences.

Regardless of how waiting times are compared between Wales and England, I have been clear that the extent of waits inherited from the previous Government is wholly unacceptable, which is why we are delivering an ambitious set of measures to drive down waits across the country, including through the implementation of a new national surgical hub programme.