Hamza Yousaf has been described as the ‘continuity candidate’ in the SNP leadership race. Yousaf remains the bookies’ favourite and has managed to avoided the media storm that his rival Kate Forbes has faced following her comments about gay marriage. But Yousaf’s own record in politics deserves some scrutiny. So how has the Scottish health secretary fared in his current role?

This morning, Audit Scotland released a damning report that laid bare the full extent of Humza Yousaf’s health service crisis. It urged the Scottish government to be ‘fully transparent’ about ‘what progress is or is not being achieved’, and revealed that the health service is still nowhere close to meeting NHS Recovery Plan targets.

Only months ago, Humza Yousaf was facing calls to resign as the crisis facing Scotland’s NHS worsened dramatically over the winter. It had been revealed that over 42,000 patients had been forced to wait over 12 hours to access A&E care between January and October 2022. Things got so bad that at the turn of the year, Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of BMA Scotland, announced: ‘There is no way that the NHS in Scotland can survive. In fact, many of my members are telling me that the NHS in Scotland has died already.’

These five graphs reveal Yousaf’s failings as he has presided over the Scottish health service:

Want to see more SNP fails? – Education Matters