SCOTS face “serious” issues accessing health and care services and “these problems are not rapidly improving,” a Nuffield Trust report warned today.

The think tank urged the next Scottish government to take action to improve services, warning that whichever party or coalition of parties forms a government following next month’s Holyrood election, they face “the need to build up the capacity of planned care, core general practice and social care simultaneously.”

It said that NHS performance over the last five years showed slow progress recovering from the Covid pandemic and that hospital stays have got longer.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar vowed his party would declare a “national waiting times emergency” in the NHS if elected into power.

SNP candidate Clare Haughey insisted her party’s plan for Scotland’s health service “is working — long waiting times are down, operation numbers up, and we are opening GP walk-in centres all over the country.”