NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday cited comments from a leading medical college saying the UK “has the best performing accident and emergency services in the world” and that Scotland “has the best performing A&E services in the United Kingdom” as she brushed off an attack from Kezia Dugdale on the state of the NHS north of the Border.

The First Minister was told by the Scottish Labour leader the health service was at “breaking point” as she pressed her on how many days were lost in the NHS last year due to staff stress.

But the SNP leader said that since her party took office in 2007 the number of people working in the service had increased by 10,500 and that next year the Scottish Government would increase the NHS’s budget by £500 million.

Then she added: “Kezia Dugdale mentioned comments from the Royal College of General Practitioners and the RCN. I note that she omitted to mention yesterday’s comments from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. It said that the United Kingdom has the best performing accident and emergency services in the world and that Scotland has the best performing A&E services in the United Kingdom. We should say a massive thank you to NHS staff for that.”

At First Minister’s Questions, Dugdale, an MSP for the Lothian region, also asked the SNP leader about the future of the children’s ward at St John’s Hospital in Livingston, West Lothian.

But the First Minister replied that she would “take absolutely no lectures from Scottish Labour” when it came to the hospital after a previous Labour-led Scottish Government had taken away a series of services from the hospital including trauma orthopaedics and emergency surgery.

“Now we know the First Minister won’t guarantee the children’s ward will stay open,” Dugdale responded, insisting: “Our NHS is at breaking point.”

She said her Labour colleague Neil Findlay had uncovered emails showing Health Secretary Shona Robison “had been pressurising officials to delay a decision into St John’s until after the election”.

Dugdale added: “Kicking unpopular decisions into the long grass has become a hallmark of this Government and it’s not just in the Lothians.

“We know NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is preparing for budget cuts of up to £60m, including the closure of services and cuts to staff numbers.”

Later, the First Minister turned to the state of the Labour Party and to an internal party report leaked earlier in the week.

She told the chamber: “The fact of the matter is that we do not get any ideas from Kezia Dugdale and Labour. We just get whingeing from the sidelines.

“The focus group report that was published this week, which Labour tried to suppress [said that] for Scottish voters, Labour is indistinguishable from the Conservatives.”

To which Dugdale replied: “On the first focus group quote that the First Minister read out, the only person acting like a Tory in the chamber this week is [Finance Secretary] John Swinney, who is enforcing austerity on councils across Scotland.”

The First Minister pointed out that in “a few weeks’ time” John Swinney would ask Parliament to vote for a budget that would deliver £500m of extra funding to the NHS.

“I am more than happy to put the health record of this Government to the people of Scotland in a couple of months’ time and ask them to judge it against the woeful record and the woeful present performance of this Labour Opposition,” the SNP leader added.