Plans for a tough new health service watchdog have been unveiled following The Herald's NHS Time for Action campaign.

A new agency, Care Improvement Scotland, would merge existing regulatory bodies but would be independent of government and would be given sweeping new powers.

It would be able to conduct ­unannounced investigations across

the health service and send in troubleshooting "change teams" to turn around failing health boards, hospitals or departments.

It would also consider complaints from patients and whistleblowers within the NHS, under Scottish Labour plans.

In another new move, the body would take on powers similar to environment watchdog Sepa, allowing it to conduct criminal investigations into failures of care or allegations of malpractice in the NHS and report its findings to the Crown Office.

The body would report impartially on the impact of Government policies on the NHS in a role likened by Labour to that of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which provides independent data and analysis on the UK economy.

The proposal has been agreed by ­Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont's shadow cabinet in response to growing concerns about the Scottish NHS, highlighted by The Herald's campaign.

Over the past week The Herald has revealed how almost all the country's A&E departments are considered unsafe by lead clinicians, while pressures on NHS capacity led to some patients being cared for in cupboards.

Writing in today's Herald, Richard Simpson, Scottish Labour's public health spokesman, says: "One of

the fundamental problems that has allowed this situation to develop is a regulatory regime that is both confusing and toothless.

"To make real progress we need a system that is integrated, transparent, promotes honesty, welcomes input from patients, families and staff and most of all, tackles our challenges

head on."

Labour's proposal would merge the NHS's in-house body Health Improvement Scotland (His) - which sets and monitors standards - and the Care Inspectorate, which regulates care homes and social care services.

The new body would have greatly increased powers to investigate the NHS. Health Improvement Scotland routinely inspects only hospitals' records on superbugs and elderly care.

Giving it greater independence and adding a complaint-handling role would put the new body firmly on the side of patients and let it hear alarm bells when problems arise, Labour says.

The new body would inherit His's power to remove licences from failing independent health-care providers, and take on the Care Inspectorate's power to de-register social-care providers failing to meet minimum standards.

Dr Simpson, a GP and psychiatrist before entering politics, said the recent waiting-times scandal, when patients were wrongly declared unavailable for treatment to let NHS Lothian meet waiting-time targets, proved the need for a tougher watchdog.

Thousands of patients were affected, and it was found that declaring patients unavailable was a widespread and growing practice in Scotland. It tailed off ­dramatically after the Lothian scandal was exposed. But a nationwide inquiry by Audit Scotland was hampered by poor data, the public spending watchdog said, prompting demands for accurate information by a cross-party committee

of MSPs.

Labour also said it was extremely complacent to assume problems in NHS England, exposed by the high death-rate scandal in Mid Staffs, could not be repeated in Scotland.

Praising The Herald's campaign, Dr Simpson added:"The NHS Time For Action campaign has shone a light on problems and is giving a much-needed voice to those professionals and patients who care about the health service."