NHS waiting lists are heading towards a staggering eight million, a minister admitted on Friday.
Health minister Maria Caulfield told LBC Radio that the overall figure was expected to rise “slightly higher” than its current level.
She was asked by presenter Nick Ferrari to give a commitment that the NHS list, for routine hospital treatment, would not go above the record 7.47 million at the end of May.
Ms Caulfield responded: “No, we probably expect in all honesty for it to peak around...in the next few months and will then start to come down.
Pressed by Mr Ferrari on the peak, whether it would be 7.6, 7.7 or how high, she added: “We are almost at the peak but we think it will go slightly higher.
“But it will then start to come down.””
She also stressed that the very long waits for treatment were coming down, which she added was the “crucial matter” for individual patients.
Despite the record numbers on waiting lists, the health minister emphasised: “We have actually eliminated the two year wait for these tests, we have virtually eliminated the 18 month waits and we are now concentrating on making sure patients are waiting 15 months or less for these procedures.
“That’s why these community diagnasotic centres are a key part of that in getting those times down.”
Thirteen new community diagnostic centres (CDCs) will be opened across England to carry out an additional 742,000 scans, checks and tests per year, the Government announced as it increasingly turns to the private sector in a bid to cut NHS waiting lists.
Eight of the new facilities will be operated by the private sector, although services will be free to patients, and five will be run by the NHS.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “We must use every available resource to deliver life-saving checks to ease pressure on the NHS.
“By making use of the available capacity in the independent sector, and enabling patients to access this diagnostic capacity free at the point of need, we can offer patients a wider choice of venues to receive treatment and in doing so diagnose major illnesses quicker and start treatments sooner.”
Private centres will operate similarly to their NHS counterparts, the Government said, but staff will be employed by private operators, which also own the buildings.
Sites in the South West - located in Redruth, Bristol, Torbay, Yeovil and Weston Super Mare - will be operated by diagnostics company InHealth.
Other private facilities will also be located in Southend, Northampton and south Birmingham and join four already operating in Brighton, north Solihull, Oxford and Salford.
The new NHS-run sites are in Hornchurch, Skegness, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
The Government pledged to open 160 CDCs by 2030. There are currently 114 operating, which have carried out 4.6 million tests, checks and scans since July 2021.
A number of other measures to use capacity in the private sector have been outlined by the Elective Recovery Taskforce, which was set up in December.
These include using data from private health providers to identify where they could take on more NHS patients to help clear backlogs. They will also look at using the private sector to train junior NHS staff.
However, Labour said the Government is currently not making enough use of private capacity.
The party claims 331,000 patients waiting for NHS care could have been treated since January 2022.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, said: “The Conservatives are failing to make use of private sector capacity and patients are paying the price.
“No-one should be waiting in pain while hospital beds that could be used lie empty. The next Labour government will use spare capacity in the private sector to get patients seen faster.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to bring waiting lists down earlier this year, but last month he said industrial action across the NHS is making the task “more challenging”.
