SCOTTISH Labour accused the SNP of “taking its eye off the ball” on the cervical cancer screening disaster today as new evidence suggested that the issue could have been uncovered years earlier.

In June, Public Health Minister Maree Todd admitted that hundreds of women who had undergone partial hysterectomies had been excluded from Scotland’s cervical cancer screening programme. 

The minister said that at least one woman who had been wrongfully excluded had died of cervical cancer and that the true number of women excluded could be far higher.