Humza Yousaf has been accused of ‘abandoning’ the north-east amid a chronic lack of access to GP services in Aberdeen and the Shire.

Labour MSP for the north-east Mercedes Villalba claims the first minister has rolled back on a set of commitments he made to improve care in the Granite City.

Ms Villalba has raised fears over declining services at private practices and called for their standards to be monitored after surveys suggested many patients were dissatisfied.

And Tory Liam Kerr MSP has warned Scotland’s new health secretary that 34,000 patients within a five-mile radius in Aberdeenshire may soon be left struggling to access a doctor unless he comes up with a new plan to boost north-east GP numbers.

Mr Kerr said exhausted GPs were at ‘breaking point’ as practices in Inverurie and Oldmeldrum face an uncertain future over recruitment struggles.

At Holyrood, he told Michael Matheson that the lack of Scottish Government support to solve the recruitment crisis had left doctors ‘beyond the end of their tether’.

Eight months ago, then-health secretary Mr Yousaf pledged to instruct health chiefs to develop improvement plans for under-performing practices.

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