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Leading Scottish National Party (SNP) politicians are drawing up a renewed case for Scottish independence while the United Kingdom is in lockdown. According to a recent report by The Times, the SNP are formulating policies and expecting to unveil a prospectus once the coronavirus outbreak has come to an end. Before the pandemic, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was determined to hold a second referendum on independence this year, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson repeatedly rejecting her calls.

However, because of the coronavirus pandemic gripping the world, the Scottish Government has put the campaign on hold.

A Holyrood election is due next May, and if the SNP were to win an outright majority it would significantly raise the chance of a second referendum being held.

As uncertainty over the future of the Union continues, unearthed reports shed light on Ms Sturgeon’s time as a Health Minister.

Ms Sturgeon served as the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing from 2007 until 2012.

She then stepped down in the role to take charge of the independence referendum.

In 2013, though, Ms Sturgeon found herself under fire after the public spending watchdog found widespread failings in the waiting times system during her tenure as Health Secretary.

An Audit Scotland report said the Scottish government had demanded that health boards cut waiting times but failed to monitor how they were meeting the tough targets.

Its report showed that boards increasingly marked patients as “socially unavailable” for appointments between 2008 and 2011 in a move that stopped the clock running on how long they had been waiting.

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The surge in the practice fell off after NHS Lothian was caught marking patients as “socially unavailable” if, for example, they refused appointments in England.

Audit Scotland said that the “management and scrutiny of the waiting list systems [had] not been good enough” — and doctors accused ministers of putting politics before patients.

During First Minister’s Questions in 2013, former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont hit out at Ms Sturgeon, saying: “Someone should tell Nicola Sturgeon false statistics and public deceptions don’t cure patients and they don’t win referendums either.

“It has been said that there are two types of health ministers — failures and those who get out in time.

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“Isn’t the truth that, despite the spin, Nicola Sturgeon didn’t get out in time?”

Former First Minister Alex Salmond defended his Deputy, and sought to blame the debacle on the IT systems, which Audit Scotland had said, in some situations, did not properly record cases.

Mr Salmond also said patient satisfaction with the NHS remained high, adding: “This is not about the health service – it’s all about getting Nicola Sturgeon from the Labour Party.”

Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, noted the First Minister had issued 50 press releases “bragging” about his waiting times initiative.

Mr Rennie said: “He was telling us how good the system was at the same time as thousands were being sent to the waiting times equivalent of Siberia.

“Has he got anything humble to say to those people?”

According to the latest figures, accident and emergency waiting times performance in Scotland reached its best level in almost three years in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The figures show that in the week ending May 10, some 95.4 percent of patients in A&E were seen and admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target time set by the Scottish Government.

The last time A&E departments achieved that level of performance was in July 2017.

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