SNP ministers were on the rocks again yesterday over the “national scandal” of missed NHS targets as it was revealed that more than half of patients referred for specialist professional treatment waited over four weeks.

The Scottish government set a four-week waiting time target for key services provided by professions such as physiotherapy and podiatry.

But new analysis shows that this has been broken more than 300,000 times since it was introduced by Nicola Sturgeon in 2016.