Will the government be able to achieve its new targets?

Keir Starmer has Outlined its “plan for change” In the speech, targets were set in key areas.

He said they were “measurable milestones that will also give the British people the power to hold our feet to the fire”.

BBC Verify looks at whether the government can meet these targets.

The Prime Minister highlighted a current target for the NHS in England that 92% of patients waiting for planned treatment should be seen within 18 weeks of being referred.

This was a manifesto pledge and the government has resolved to achieve it by 2029.

Latest NHS data shows that only 58.5% of operations, or other procedures that people were waiting for, took place within 18 weeks in September 2024.

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

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

To meet this target, the government has said it wants the NHS in England to have an additional 40,000 appointments and operations every week.

To help fund it, Chancellor Rachel Reeves increased Her Autumn Budget increased the Department of Health’s inflation-adjusted daily cash resources by 3.8% in both 2024–25 and 2025–26.

However, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents managers, it is warned Achieving the 40,000 appointments and operational target will not, in itself, be sufficient to achieve the broader 92% waiting list target.

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

Starmer made a new pledge to increase the amount of money held by households.

The government will use two measures to keep track of this.

The first is per capita real household disposable income (RHDI). This is what people’s salaries and benefits are left after paying taxes.

In October, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which makes government forecasts, it was predicted Per capita RHDI will increase by about 0.5% per year in this Parliament.

According to Resolution Foundation calculationsThe performance of a think tank focused on living standards would be slightly better than the average increase of 0.3% in per capita RHDI in the last Parliament.

But it will be worse than every other Parliament in decades.

The second measurement is GDP (a measure of the size of the economy) divided by the size of the population, which the Prime Minister says will increase in every region of Britain.

In the last Parliament, GDP per capita in Britain fell.

Starmer also noted the manifesto’s pledge to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7, which would mean stronger growth than the US, Canada, Italy, France, Japan and Germany.

IMF’s latest forecast October suggests that average growth in Canada and the US between 2024 and 2029 will be stronger than the UK.

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

The government has recommitted to its manifesto promise to employ 13,000 extra neighborhood police officers, volunteer special constables and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), who work alongside officers but do not have all the same powers.

BBC Verify has asked the Home Office about these 13,000 officers – and how many new ones there will be – but they have not yet responded and government document Doesn’t determine it.

Tiff Lynch, acting national chairman of the officers’ staff union, the Police Federation of England and Wales, has welcomed the government’s recruitment drive.

But he also warned that morale in the force is low due to real pay cuts in recent years and pointed to Federation’s last survey 22% of respondents said they planned to leave within the next two years.

The government pledged to increase the proportion of “school ready” children in England at the age of five to 75%.

Official data from education department It shows that in 2023-24, 67.7% of children in England will have a “good level of development”.

It is based on teacher assessment of children’s development at the age of five.

This was slightly higher than the previous year’s 67.2%.

the government is in the middle Major expansion of state-funded childcare,

From September 2025, The government is promising to fulfill 30 hours of government-funded child care per week for children under five in England, building on a previous government commitment.

However, the Early Years Alliance, which represents nurseries in England, It is estimated that the increase The employer National Insurance contributions announced in the Budget will result in an average additional annual cost of more than £18,600 per provider. It is based on a survey of its members.

The childcare sector has warned that, without extra money to offset the tax rise, nurseries could withdraw from the free childcare scheme, or some could go out of business.

Also in line with Labour’s manifesto, Starmer has recommended building 1.5 million net additional homes in England during the parliament.

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

Latest official data shows 221,070 net additional homes delivered in 2023–24, a decline of 6% from the previous year.

The government is introducing new housing targets for local councils in England, which were dropped by the previous administration, and is reforming planning laws to try to speed up construction.

But many housing experts are skeptical about the feasibility of Labour’s target given the lack of affordability of new housing, which has turned away many buyers and deterred private developers from investing.

Official figures also show the same The number of housing projects delivered by councils in England reached a record low in the final months of the previous government, largely due to a decline in applications from builders.

In November 2023, a labor press release Talked about “leading the world with 100% clean energy by 2030”.

The party’s election manifesto promised “zero-carbon electricity by 2030”.

Starmer now says the government will achieve at least 95% clean electricity by 2030.

The Prime Minister was repeatedly questioned about whether this represented a change in target but he denied this.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO), the government’s independent system planner and operator for the energy transition, last month Clean power is defined as including Less than 5% production from gas in a typical year.

it Recently it has been concluded “It is possible for Great Britain to build, connect and operate a clean electricity system by 2030, while maintaining security of supply”.

However, it also says that achieving this would be “at the limit of what is possible”.

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