Labour say there’s been a ‘massive increase’ in NHS appointments – this begs to differ
“The target was never particularly ambitious,” says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) about Labour’s plan to add two million extra NHS appointments during their first year in power.
In February, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced they had achieved the feat early. He recently described the now 3.6m additional appointments achieved in their first eight months as a “massive increase”.
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But new data, obtained by independent fact checking charity Full Fact and shared exclusively with Sky News, reveals this figure actually signalled a slowing down in new NHS activity.
There was an even larger rise of 4.2m extra appointments over the same period the year before, under Rishi Sunak’s government.
The data also reveals how unambitious the target was in the first place.
We now know two million extra appointments over the course of a year represents a rise of less than 3% of the almost 70 million carried out in the year to June 2024.
In the last year under Mr Sunak, the rise was 10% – and the year before that it was 8%.
Responding to the findings, Sarah Scobie, deputy director of independent health and social care think tank the Nuffield Trust, told Sky News the two million target was “very modest”.
She said delivering that number of appointments “won’t come close to bringing the treatment waiting list back to pre-pandemic levels, or to meeting longer-term NHS targets”.
The IFS said it was smaller than the annual growth in demand pressures forecast by the government.
What exactly did Labour promise?
The Labour election manifesto said: “As a first step, in England we will deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments every year; that is 40,000 more appointments every week.”
We asked the government many times exactly how it would measure the pledge, as did policy experts from places like the IFS and Full Fact. But it repeatedly failed to explain how it was defined.
Leo Benedictus, a journalist and fact-checker at Full Fact, told Sky News: “We didn’t know how they were defining these appointments.
“When they said that there would be more of them, we didn’t know what there would be more of.”
Leo Benedictus
Even once in government, initially Labour did not specify their definition of “operations, scans, and appointments”, or what the baseline “extra” was being measured against.
This prevented us and others from measuring progress every month when NHS stats were published. Did it include, for instance, mental health and A&E appointments? And when is the two million extra comparison dating from?
Target met, promise kept?
Suddenly, in February, the government announced the target had already been met – and ever since, progress on appointments has been a key boast of ministers and Labour MPs.
At this point, they did release some information: the definition of procedures that allowed them to claim what had been achieved. They said the target involved is elective – non-emergency – operations excluding maternity and mental health services; outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests.
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However, we still did not have a comprehensive baseline to measure the two million increase against.
The government data instead relied on a snapshot: comparing the number of appointments carried out from July to November 2024 with the number from July to November 2023, and adjusted them for the number of working days in each period.
This did not tell us if the NHS had already been adding appointments under the Conservatives, and at what pace, and therefore whether this target was a big impressive ramping up of activity or, as it turns out, actually a slowing down.
Since then, a number of organisations, like Full Fact, have been fighting with the government to release the data.
Mr Benedictus said: “We asked them for that information. They didn’t publish it. We didn’t have it.
“The only way we could get hold of it was by submitting an FOI request, which they had to answer. And when that came back about a month later, it was fascinating.”
This finally gives us the comparative data allowing us to see what the baseline is against which the government’s “success” is being measured.
Full Fact passed the data to Sky News because it had seen our reporting about how the information published by the NHS in February was not sufficient to be able to assess whether things were getting better or worse.
What the government says now
We put our findings to the government.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “On entering office last July, the secretary of state [Wes Streeting] was advised that the fiscal black hole meant elective appointments would have to be cut by 20,000 every week.
“Instead, this government provided the extra investment and has already delivered 3.6 million additional appointments – more than the manifesto commitment the British public voted for – while also getting more patients seen within 18 weeks.
“In the nine months since this government took office, the waiting list has dropped by over 200,000 – more than five times as much as it had over the same period the previous year – and also fell for six consecutive months in a row.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Pic: PA
We put this to Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak’s chancellor during his last two years as prime minister, and health secretary for six years under David Cameron and Theresa May.
He said: “What these numbers seem to show is that the rate of appointments was going up by more in the last government than it is by this government. That’s really disappointing when you look at the crisis in the NHS.
“All the evidence is that if you want to increase the number of people being treated, you need more capacity in the system, and you need the doctors and nurses that are there to be working more productively.
“Instead what we’ve had from this government is the vast majority of the extra funding for the NHS has gone into pay rises, without asking for productivity in return.”
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Edward Argar, shadow health secretary, accused the government of a “weak attempt […] to claim credit for something that was already happening”.
“We need to see real and meaningful reform that will genuinely move the dial for patients,” he added.
Is the NHS getting better or worse?
New polling carried out by YouGov on behalf of Sky News this week also reveals 39% of people think the NHS has got worse over the past year, compared with 12% who think it’s got better.
Six in 10 people say they do not trust Keir Starmer personally on the issue of the NHS, compared with three in 10 who say they do.
That is a better rating than some of his rivals, however. Just 21% of people say they trust Nigel Farage with the NHS, and only 16% trust Kemi Badenoch – compared with 64% and 60% who do not.
Ed Davey performs better, with 30% saying they trust him and 38% saying they do not.
Ms Scobie of the Nuffield Trust told Sky News “the government is right to make reducing long hospital treatment waits a key priority […] but much faster growth in activity is needed for the NHS to see a substantial improvement in waiting times for patients.”
The government is correct, however, to point out the waiting list having dropped by more than 200,000 since it’s been in office. This is the biggest decline between one July and the following February since current waiting list statistics were first published under Gordon Brown.
The percentage of people waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment is also falling for the first time, other than a brief period during the pandemic, for the first time in more than a decade.
There is still a long way to go, though. Figures released last week showed the total number of people waiting for NHS treatment in England had risen again in March, following six months of positive progress.
The latest figures show 6.25m people waiting for 7.42m treatments (some people are on the list for more than one issue). That means more than one in 10 people in England are currently waiting for NHS treatment.
There continues to be a fall in the number who have been waiting longer than a year. It’s now 180,242, down from almost 400,000 in August 2023 and over 300,000 in June 2024, the Conservatives’ last month in power.
But that number is still incredibly high by historical standards. It remains over 100 times higher than it was before the pandemic.
The government has a separate pledge that no more than 8% of patients will wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment, by the time of the next election. Despite improvements in recent months, currently more than 40% wait longer than this.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Members of the US House of Representatives called for the Justice Department to investigate Donald Trump’s May 22 dinner for his top memecoin investors, citing concerns about “foreign influence over US policy decisions” and “potential corruption and emoluments clause violations.”
In a May 22 letter to the Justice Department, 35 House members asked the public integrity section acting chief, Edward Sullivan, to launch an inquiry over the memecoin dinner to determine whether it violated the federal bribery statute or the foreign emoluments clause of the US Constitution.
Under the emoluments clause, a US president is barred from accepting any gift from a foreign state without the approval of Congress. Bloomberg reported that a majority of the attendees at the memecoin dinner were likely foreign nationals based on their connections to crypto exchanges.
“US law prohibits foreign persons from contributing to US political campaigns,” said the letter. “However, the $TRUMP memecoin, including the promotion of a dinner promising exclusive access to the President, opens the door for foreign governments to buy influence with the President, all without disclosing their identities.”
The call for an investigation and a press conference asking Trump to “release the guest list” for the dinner both occurred hours before the event, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, DC. A group of protesters, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley, gathered outside the venue with signs stating “illegal crypto party” and “democracy is not for sale.”
Related: Who attended Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner?
Though some of the dinner attendees covered their faces with masks to conceal their identities, protesters and members of the media confirmed that Tron founder Justin Sun appeared at the event, as well as other Trump supporters who posted to social media. The complete list of attendees was not available at the time of publication.
The memecoin dinner still has the potential to affect pending legislation in Congress
In addition to the call for a DOJ investigation, Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed legislation to address what they called “Trump’s crypto corruption” as Congress considered a bill to regulate stablecoins and a market structure bill.
Several Senate Democrats who initially voted against advancing the stablecoin bill, called the GENIUS Act, later sided with Republicans to set up a debate in the chamber.
Representative Maxine Waters introduced a bill to limit the access of any US president, vice president, members of Congress and their families to cryptocurrencies. Members of the Senate will also propose an amendment to the GENIUS Act to address Trump’s connection to World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform backed by the president’s family that issued its USD1 stablecoin.
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Risk appetite across traditional and cryptocurrency markets saw a sharp rise this week, helping United States cryptocurrency funds recover the capital lost to the correction of February and March, amassing over $7.5 billion worth of weekly inflows.
Bitcoin (BTC) surpassed its old all-time high on May 21, two days after President Donald Trump confirmed ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in a May 19 X post.
Meanwhile, popular analyst and Global Macro Investor CEO Raoul Pal warned of more fiat currency debasement, urging investors to gain more exposure to cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as these assets “will never be this cheap again.”
Exponential currency debasement: “You don’t own enough crypto, NFTs”
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs can help investors protect their eroding purchasing power during an era of exponential currency debasement, according to analysts and industry leaders.
Investing in digital assets is becoming increasingly important in the “world of the exponential age and currency debasement,” according to Raoul Pal, founder and CEO of Global Macro Investor.
“You don’t own enough crypto. When you do, you don’t own enough NFT’s, as art is upstream of wealth. Both will never be this cheap again,” Pal said.
NFTs are “the single best long term store of wealth I know and you get to buy it before network effects kick in,” he added in another response.
“There is some validity to the statement that NFTs, and in extension art, become a vehicle for the wealthy once a certain level of wealth is reached,” wrote Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen, calling it a “natural move” for asset diversification.
“For traders and investors, further down the wealth curve, NFTs are partially about speculating on future returns,” he told Cointelegraph, adding that NFTs also benefit from the allure of strong communities, beyond just wealth creation.
US crypto funds top $7.5 billion inflows in 2025 as investor appetite grows
Crypto investment products in the United States have attracted over $7.5 billion worth of investment in 2025, with a fifth week of net positive inflows last week signaling growing investor demand for digital assets.
US-based crypto investment products attracted $785 million worth of investment last week, pushing the year-to-date (YTD) total to over $7.5 billion, according to a May 19 report by digital asset manager CoinShares.
The latest figure marks the fifth consecutive week of net positive flows, following nearly $7 billion in outflows during February and March.
The United States accounted for the bulk of inflows, with $681 million, followed by Germany at $86.3 million and Hong Kong at $24.4 million.
Investor demand for risk assets such as cryptocurrencies staged a significant recovery after the White House announced a 90-day pause on additional tariffs on May 12, which marked a 24% cut for import tariffs for both the US and China.
A day after the announcement, Coinbase exchange saw 9,739 Bitcoin worth more than $1 billion withdrawn from the exchange — the highest net outflow recorded in 2025, signaling that institutional appetite was “accelerating,” according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.
VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund
VanEck plans to launch a private digital assets fund in June targeting tokenized Web3 projects built on the Avalanche blockchain network, the asset manager said in a statement shared with Cointelegraph.
The VanEck PurposeBuilt Fund, available only to accredited investors, aims to invest in liquid tokens and venture-backed projects across Web3 sectors, including gaming, financial services, payments, and artificial intelligence.
Idle capital will be deployed into Avalanche (AVAX) real-world asset (RWA) products, including tokenized money market funds, VanEck said.
The fund will be managed by the team behind VanEck’s Digital Assets Alpha Fund (DAAF), which oversees more than $100 million in net assets as of May 21.
“The next wave of value in crypto will come from real businesses, not more infrastructure,” Pranav Kanade, portfolio manager for DAAF, said in a statement.
Yield-bearing stablecoins surge to $11 billion, now 4.5% of market: Report
Yield-bearing stablecoins have soared to $11 billion in circulation, representing 4.5% of the total stablecoin market, a steep climb from just $1.5 billion and a 1% market share at the start of 2024.
One of the biggest winners is Pendle, a decentralized protocol that enables users to lock in fixed yields or speculate on variable interest rates. Pendle now accounts for 30% of all yield-bearing stablecoin total value locked (TVL), roughly $3 billion, according to a report from Pendle compiled by analysts from Spartan Group and Modular Capital shared with Cointelegraph.
The report noted that stablecoins make up 83% of its $4 billion total value locked, a sharp rise from less than 20% just a year ago. In contrast, assets such as Ether (ETH), which historically contributed 80%–90% of Pendle’s TVL, have shrunk to less than 10%.
Traditional stablecoins like USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC) do not pass on interest to holders. With over $200 billion in circulation and US Federal Reserve interest rates at 4.3%, Pendle estimates that stablecoin holders are missing out on more than $9 billion in annual yield.
Tether surpasses Germany’s $111 billion of US Treasury holdings
Tether, the $151 billion stablecoin issuance giant, has surpassed Germany in United States Treasury bill holdings, showcasing the benefits of a diversified reserve strategy that has helped the firm navigate the volatility of the cryptocurrency market.
Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, has surpassed Germany’s $111.4 billion worth of US Treasurys, data from the US Department of the Treasury shows.
Tether has surpassed $120 billion worth of Treasury bills, the firm shared in its attestation report for the first quarter of 2025. That makes Tether the 19th largest entity among all counties in terms of T-bill investments.
“This milestone not only reinforces the company’s conservative reserve management strategy but also highlights Tether’s growing role in distributing dollar-denominated liquidity at scale,” wrote Tether in the report.
During 2024, Tether was the seventh-largest buyer of US Treasurys across all countries, surpassing Canada, Taiwan, Mexico, Norway, Hong Kong and numerous other countries, Cointelegraph reported in March 2025.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
Worldcoin (WLD) rose over 32% as the week’s biggest gainer in the top 100, followed by the Hyperliquid (HYPE) token, up over 30% on the weekly chart.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
The top 220 holders of US President Donald Trump’s memecoin met yesterday at the president’s golf course in Virginia for an exclusive dinner and purported meet-and-greet.
Attendees spent a grand total of $148 million for an “ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president,” which crypto industry advocates and critics alike saw as a potential opportunity to discuss crypto policy with the president.
The crowd contained a number of foreign crypto executives and influencers who otherwise would not have access to the US president, raising questions around corruption and foreign influence.
Concerns were further augmented when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to release a list of attendees, stating that the event was a private affair outside of Trump’s presidential duties.
However, some attendees spoke to the press or took to social media to talk about the dinner. Here are just a few:
Justin Sun
Tron founder Justin Sun was the largest TRUMP tokenholder at the gala, which was reportedly enough to earn him a special watch, presented in a special ceremony.
Sun’s presence at the event was particularly controversial. Last year, he faced a lawsuit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over the alleged “orchestration of the unregistered offer and sale, manipulative trading, and unlawful touting of crypto asset securities.”
The SEC asked for a reprieve in late February, just over a month since Trump’s inauguration and the subsequent 180 in federal agencies’ approach toward regulating crypto.
Outside the crypto dinner, Sun posted on May 21 that he would be spending a week in Washington, DC to have “meaningful conversations that will help shape the next chapter of blockchain’s future” in the United States.
Kain Warwick
Kain Warwick, founder of crypto exchange operator iFinex, told The New York Times on May 12 that he was attending the event after stocking up on enough TRUMP to break the top 25 investors on the leaderboard.
Warwick said he wanted to have a shot at meeting the president, or someone on his team, to talk crypto — specifically decentralized finance (DeFi), which is getting less attention in the current crop of crypto bills circulating the US Congress.
“If you assume Trump and 10 people within the Trump team are there, now you’ve got a one in 15 shot of having a conversation with one of them,” he said.
Vincent Liu
Vincent Liu, chief investment officer of crypto trading, VC and market-making firm Kronos Research, attended the event, posting pictures of the menu and Trump’s brief speech.
Liu wrote, “Simply by holding the Trump token, individuals have an unprecedented opportunity to meet the President of the United States.”
He had previously told Cointelegraph, “The decision to acquire the [TRUMP] token was not political. It was based on identifying early momentum, cultural relevance and potential market catalysts.”
Related: US lawmaker introduces anti-corruption bill ahead of Trump’s dinner
His firm stated that “alpha” — i.e., exclusive or difficult-to-obtain information that could move markets — was “on the menu.”
Lamar Odom
Also in attendance was two-time National Basketball Association champion Lamar Odom. While many other crypto entrepreneurs in the audience were focused on policy, Odom used news of his attendance to plug his own memecoin, ODOM.
Odom launched his memecoin less than a week before the dinner on May 14. The anti-addiction-themed memecoin (Odom had a public battle with substance addiction) is issued on the Solana blockchain.
The coin itself had a 20% “Trump Dinner Program” staking scheme, where TRUMP holders could stake their coins with Odom’s project, ostensibly to enable him to attend the dinner event, and receive ODOM airdrops in return. Odom himself will hold 5% of all ODOM.
Sangrok Oh
CEO of Seoul- and Tokyo-based cryptocurrency management firm Hyperithm, Sangrok Oh was the 13th-largest TRUMP holder with a wallet containing over $3 million worth of the token, according to the Straits Times.
Oh told The New York Times that he had arrived with a batch of red “Make Crypto Great Again” hats to give away at the dinner and expected to speak directly with the president. “It’s kind of a fund-raiser […] And he’ll always be good to his sponsors.”
Oh has been critical of the slow regulatory progress for crypto in the countries where his company operates.
Anonymous attendees
In addition to crypto execs and sports stars, the event also noted a few anonymous or pseudonymous crypto traders and entrepreneurs in attendance.
Among them was “Ice,” co-founder of the Singaporean crypto company MemeCore. Their company’s chief business development officer, Cherry Hsu, told Sherwood News that Trump’s rise “represents the power of memes to influence culture, perception, and movements — principles that align with MemeCore’s vision of a decentralized, community-driven future.”
“Ogle,” a cybersecurity adviser to Trump’s own World Liberty Financial crypto enterprise, as well as the pseudonymous co-founder of blockchain ecosystem Glue, also attended. Ogle said they were going out of curiosity, more than anything, and did not endorse Trump personally. “I’m hoping it’ll be fun — and hoping they’ll serve McDonald’s.”
Another anonymous attendee was “Cryptoo Bear,” a crypto trader and occasional news reporter who posts primarily in Japanese. Cryptoo Bear made no political statements about the event, mainly posting about the swag and the food. They did say they were promised a photo op with the president, but it didn’t pan out.
Dinner “guests” across the picket line
Outside the country club, US senators and former staffers attended the event as part of a protest.
Bloomberg reported that protestors shouted “Shame!” and “I hope you choke on your dinner!” at attendees. Critics of the event widely consider it to be a glaring example of corruption in Washington and within the Trump administration.
Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, joined the protest. “The spirit of the Constitution was that no one elected would be selling influence to anyone,” he said, “because it’s to be government by and for the people.”
Ken Papaj, a former Treasury Department official, said, “Every time there’s a transaction, he gets a transaction fee? Just unconscionable what he’s doing.”
The dinner comes at a pivotal time for the crypto industry in the US, where the industry is pushing hard for Congress to pass friendly regulations. Trump’s ties may complicate matters, however, as lawmakers have introduced anti-corruption bills targeting crypto and politicians.
Senate Democrats are also taking aim at the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, introducing a slew of amendments addressing Trump’s crypto businesses.
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