ENGLISH hospitals would improve the performance of their overloaded A&E units by learning from Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday, despite continued missed waiting time targets.

The First Minister told MSPs the NHS in the rest of the UK could look to the “best practice” demonstrated north of the border.

At First Minister’s Questions, she said that, thanks to the actions of the SNP government, “our NHS is coping better than the NHS in other parts of the UK”.

In November, 93.6 per cent of people attending a Scottish A&E unit were dealt with within four hours, against a target of 95 per cent, though this fell to 92.3 in the week after Christmas.

In England in November, just 88.4 per cent were seen within four hours, the 18th month in a row that the target has been missed.

After Tory leader Ruth Davidson asked about A&E problems at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, Ms Sturgeon quoted Derek Bell of the Royal College of Physicians, who said Scotland was “consistently performing 8 or 10 per cent better than England”.

She credited a six-point Scottish plan for the relatively better waiting times.

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

“If there is any best practice with regard to A&E to be learned right now in the NHS anywhere in the United Kingdom, it is best practice in the NHS in Scotland.”

Her comments came as she was attacked over a three-year delay to a new network of major trauma centres (MTCs) promised in 2014.

MTC hubs at Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow were supposed to be operational last month, saving 40 lives and treating 6000 gravely injured patients a year.

However Ms Sturgeon said on Wednesday the “scale and complexity” of the project meant the new specialist care and rehabilitation service had been put back “at least three years”.

Demanding a fuller explanation, Ms Davidson said: "Communities have been expecting these centres for two years and now have been told at least another three.”

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale claimed the "only consistent thing the SNP delivers is broken promises on the NHS".

After calls from Labour and the Tories for Health Secretary Shona Robison to make an urgent statement to parliament on the MTCs, the government said she would do so next week.

Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar: “Yet again the SNP government have caved in to Labour demands that Shona Robison come to parliament and explains her failures.

“This is the second time she has attempted to hide behind the First Minister.”

"The first time was after the worst Audit Scotland report on our NHS since devolution and now after broken promises on vital trauma centres.”