The Scottish Daily Record reports:

Poor NHS treatment has led to almost half a million Scots dying in the last 30 years, a new study has revealed.

Doctors at Glasgow University found that between 1974 and 2003, a total of 462,000 people died in Scotland as a result of health service failings.

It means Scotland has one of the highest avoidable death rates in western Europe.

The study examined the number of deaths caused by a lack of “timely and effective health care”.

The vast majority of people – around 250,000 – who died due to inadequate or delayed treatment were heart or stroke patients.

Another 7300 had cancer and slightly more than 2000 were pneumonia patients.

The study revealed that avoidable deaths among men in Scotland over the time period was 176 for every 100,000 people.

This compared with 159 in Portugal, 129 in Austria and 100 in Italy.

Rates for women were 123 per 100,000, also higher than every other European country investigated.