NICOLA Sturgeon has suggested struggling accident and emergency units in England should look to Scotland – despite coming under attack from the Tories and Labour over her Government’s running of the NHS north of the Border.

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Labour’s Kezia Dugdale both challenged the First Minister over a delay of at least three years in delivering a new network of specialist NHS trauma centres. The Scottish Government said in 2014 that major trauma centres in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow would be operational from 2016.

On Wednesday, however, Sturgeon conceded the “scale and complexity’’ of the changes meant full implementation would “take at least three years’’.

When pressed on the hold-up at First Minister’s Questions, she said her programme for government last year had only committed to conclude the preparatory work for the project by the end of 2016.

But Davidson told her it was origin- ally planned the trauma centres would receive their first patients in 2016 and demanded Health Secretary Shona Robison come to the chamber to “give a full statement on the delay”.

Sturgeon rejected this, saying: “Can I just point out to Ruth Davidson I’m standing in the chamber right now, answering questions right now from her on major trauma centres.

“If she can’t get any or all of the information about this that she wants, I would suggest that’s about a deficiency in her ability to ask questions, not about any lack of information from the Scottish Government.”

She also attacked the Tory leader for raising the issue of the NHS after the Red Cross warned of a “human- itarian crisis’’ in the health service south of the Border – a description denied by NHS England.

Statistics show that while Scotland’s accident and emergency (A&E) departments are not meeting the target of treating 95 per cent of all patients within four hours, the performance of the NHS north of the Border is the best in the UK in this regard. Sturgeon told MSPs: “We provide appropriate support to health boards so they can continue to improve services and deliver better services to patients.

“Perhaps if the Government in the rest of the UK was doing similarly, there would be better A&E performance across hospitals in England.

“As an aside, the latest figures for England’s A&Es have been published this morning. They show a further decline in performance and now show a gap in performance between Scotland’s A&Es and performance in England’s of 10 percentage points.”

Figures for A&E departments in Scotland for the week ending January 1 showed that “out of every 100 patients, 92 were seen within the four-hour target”, according to the First Minister.

She added: “Obviously, my concern, my responsibility, is for Scotland, but I think it is important to say that, due to actions we have taken to support accident and emergency departments across Scotland, our NHS is coping better than the NHS in other parts of the UK.”

Dugdale claimed she had met leading consultants and surgeons at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary who told her a new trauma centre in Aberdeen could be the difference between life and death for people in the north-east. “Whether it’s someone in a serious car crash or an accident on the rigs, they were clear – having access to world-class trauma care could be a lifesaver,” she said.

Sturgeon said the Aberdeen and Dundee centres would be operational before the ones in Edinburgh and Glasgow and probably within the next year to 18 months.