SNP ministers were under fresh pressure today over their handling of the NHS, as MSPs hit out at the “shambles” of an understaffed children’s ward.

Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman insisted that “encouraging progress” had been made at St John’s Hospital in Livingston, where 24-hour service at the children’s ward was suspended last July.

SNP MSP Angela Constance raised the case last week of a sick baby who waited three hours for an ambulance to be transferred from the hospital, which could not treat the child because of staffing shortages.