The waiting list for minor surgical interventions is expected to be dramatically reduced following an agreement between the government and St James Hospital to carry out 130 surgical sessions at the private hospital.

As part of the agreement, state surgeons will make use of surgical theatres provided by St James, along with the services of nurses and anaesthetists.

Patients will be taken from the state waiting list and will not have to pay for the service.

Announcing the agreement this morning, health parliamentary secretary Chris Fearne said the agreement would eliminate the vast majority of the list of patients who had been waiting for intermediate interventions for more than a year.

Intermediate interventions are those requiring one or two days of hospitalisation and account for up to 75 per cent of all surgeries.

Mr Fearne said that in the last six months, a record 26,500 surgeries had been carried out, up by more than 1,000 from the same period last year.

He added that the state hospital had already increased the hours when surgeries were carried out to tackle the problem, but space had become a limiting factor.

Questioned about the cost to the government, Mr Fearne said the exact figure was commercially sensitive but was expected to be roughly equivalent to the costs of carrying out the operations at Mater Dei.