Hospital waiting lists have finally fallen by more than 100,000 since the last election, in accordance with Labour's most intractable election pledge, the health secretary, Alan Milburn, will announce today. Mr Milburn will attribute much of the cut in both in-patient waitings lists - 35,000 down in March compared with a year earlier - and out-patient lists - 50,000 down - to reforms in procedures introduced by Labour since 1997.
But ministers, who have struggled harder than expected to turn round what former health secretary Frank Dobson called the "NHS supertanker", are avoiding triumphalism.
"The war on waiting must be sustained. These are very en couraging figures, but this is still very much a work in progress. There will be no crowing," one official said.
Mr Milburn's caution will be justified next month when the waiting lists for April are published. Easter holidays for NHS staff and their patientswill push the figures higher again, at least for the month. But ministers believe they are on the right track now that hospitals are responding to peer group pressure to do as well as the best hospitals do.
Today's figures will take the in-patient waitings list a clear 100,000 below the 1,158,004 in March 1997, just before the 1997 election and at a time when waiting lists were rising. But it will remain above 1m.
With medical critics and opposition MPs complaining that the Labour "early pledge" exercise has backfired by mis-directing resources, ministers will take comfort from the parallel fall in out-patient waiting lists.
It had been widely assumed there would always be a trade-off with patients moved from one list to another and easier cases tackled before more serious and time consuming ones. But ministers say the parallel fall shows they are on the right track.
They will cite such examples as revised guidance on how to handle urology cases - from GP to the operating theatre - adopted by the Central Middlesex hospital in central London. "It's not rocket science, but waiting lists are at an all-time low at this hospital,"said one Milburn aide.
At Thurrock hospital the use of nurses to do endoscopy - examining patients internally with micro cameras - rather than doctors, has similarly improved productivity.
