Will the government be able to hit its new targets?

Vocabulary: 472, Words: 1120

BBC Keir Starmer walking out of the door of 10 Downing Street carrying three folders. The BBC Verify lozenge is in the top left corner.

1Keir Starmer is to outline a “plan for change” on Thursday in a speech in which he will set targets in key areas.

2This, the prime minister is expected to say, will allow voters to judge the government’s performance.

3We don’t know what all the targets will be. 4But BBC Verify has looked at the six key areas Starmer is expected to focus on and assessed what the government has already pledged to do, as well as how likely it is to achieve these goals.

5The NHS

6The NHS in England has an official target that 92% of patients waiting for planned treatment should be seen within 18 weeks of being referred.

7Labour's manifesto pledged this and the government is expected to commit to doing so by 2029.

8The latest NHS data shows that in September 2024 only 58.5% of operations, or other procedures people were waiting for, occurred within 18 weeks.

9When Labour took power in July, the share was 58.8%, so it has barely changed.

10The last time the 92% target was hit was in November 2015.

Chart showing the proportion of waits for hospital treatment in England being seen within 18 weeks of referral. In September 2024 the figure was 58.5%. When Labour came to power it was 58.8%. The government last met its 92% target in 2015, since when the proportion fell gradually until the pandemic, when it fell sharply. It has recovered somewhat since then.

11In order to meet this goal, the government has said it wants the NHS in England to get through an additional 40,000 appointments and operations each week.

12And to help fund this, Chancellor Rachel Reeves increased the inflation-adjusted day-to-day cash resources of the health department by 3.8% in both 2024-25 and 2025-26 in her Autumn Budget.

13However, Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents managers, has warned that achieving the 40,000 appointments and operations target will not be enough, on its own, to hit the broader 92% waiting list target.

14“The NHS needs reform, not just ever more activity,” Mr Taylor said.

15The economy

16Labour is expected to make a new pledge to increase the amount of money that households have.

17In October, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which does the government's forecasts, predicted that real household disposable income (RHDI) per person would rise by around 0.5% per year over this Parliament.

Chart showing the average annual growth in real household disposable income by term of Parliament since 1974. It is expected to be low during the current Parliament, although still higher than it had been over the previous one.

18According to calculations by the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on living standards, that would be a slightly better performance than the 0.3% average growth in RHDI per person in the previous Parliament.

19But it would be worse than every other Parliament for decades.

20In its manifesto, Labour pledged to "secure the highest sustained growth in the G7”: that means the UK, the US, Canada, Italy, France, Japan and Germany.

21The latest forecasts from the IMF from October suggest that Canada and the US will have stronger average growth than the UK between 2024 and 2029.

22However, it should be stressed that these are only forecasts - and forecasts related to economic growth and incomes are subject to considerable uncertainty.

23Crime

24We do know that the government will re-commit to its manifesto pledge to hire 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers, special constables and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), who work with officers but do not have all the same powers.

Chart showing the number of neighbourhood police, PCSOs and specials in March 2024, together with the target, which is 13,000 higher than the current level.

25Tiff Lynch, the acting national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, the staff association for officers, has welcomed the government’s recruitment drive.

26But she also warned that morale in the force is low due to real terms pay cuts in recent years and pointed out that in the federation's last survey 22% of respondents said they were planning to leave within the next two years.

27Education

28The government is expected to pledge to raise the proportion of children in England who are “ready for school” at the age of five, to 75%.

29Official data from the Department for Education suggests that in 2023-24, 67.7% of children in England had a “good level of development”.

30This is based on teacher assessments of children’s development at age five.

31This was up slightly from 67.2% in the previous year.

PA Young schoolchildren in blue sweatshirts raising their hands in class. One of them is wearing a loom band bracelet

32The government is in the middle of a major expansion of state-funded childcare.

33From September 2025, the government is pledging to deliver 30 hours of government funded childcare a week for under-fives in England, taking on the commitment of the previous government.

34However, the Early Years Alliance, which represents nurseries in England, estimates that the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions announced in the Budget will result in additional annual costs averaging more than £18,600 per provider. 35That is based on a survey of its members.

36The childcare sector warns that, without extra funding to make up for the tax rise, nurseries might withdraw from the free childcare scheme, or some could go out of business.

37Housebuilding

38Also in line with Labour’s manifesto, Starmer is expected to recommit to building 1.5 million net additional dwellings in England over the course of the Parliament.

39At a constant annual rate, that would equate to 300,000 per year,

Chart showing net additional dwellings since 1992. The number built in a year has not got above 250,000, whereas to achieve 1.5 million over this Parliament, there will have to be an average of 300,000 a year built.

40The most recent official data shows that 221,070 net additional dwellings were delivered in 2023-24, a decline of 6% on the previous year.

41The government is bringing in new housing targets for local councils in England, which the previous administration dropped and is reforming planning laws to try to accelerate building.

42But many housing experts remain sceptical about the feasibility of Labour’s target given the lack of affordability of new housing, which has put off many buyers and deterred private developers from investing.

43Official data also shows that the number of housing projects given the go-ahead by councils in England reached a record low in the final months of the last government, mainly because of a decline in applications from builders.

44Clean power

45As part of its commitment to substantially decarbonise the UK’s electricity grid by 2030, the government is expected to pledge, in line with its manifesto, to triple the UK’s solar power capacity, double onshore wind capacity and quadruple offshore wind capacity.

Chart showing the targets for renewable energy by 2030 compared with the levels in 2023. Solar would have to increase from 16GW to 50GW. Onshore wind would have to go up from 15GW to 35GW. Offshore wind would have to go up from 15GW to 60GW.

46The previous government presided over an auction for offshore wind contracts in September 2023 which attracted no bids for new projects - blamed on the setting of the price too low.

47The new administration's auction in September 2024 resulted in nine new contracts being signed.

48But energy experts have warned there would need to be a significant increase in capacity in next year’s bidding process. 49This is likely to be the final chance for new projects to be built in time to generate electricity for 2030.

50The National Energy System Operator (NESO), the government’s independent system planner and operator for the energy transition, recently concluded that “it is possible to build, connect and operate a clean power system for Great Britain by 2030, while maintaining security of supply".

51However, NESO added that achieving this would be “at the limit of what is feasible”.

52Additional reporting by Daniel Wainwright, William Dahlgreen, Mark Poynting and Gerry Georgieva.

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