A former Labour Party chairman has accused ex-colleagues of "sheer hypocrisy" by attacking NHS privatisation in England while insisting it will have no impact on Scotland.

Bob Thomson, a leading figure in the Labour For Independence movement, said Better Together leader Alistair Darling, Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont and former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell are "fooling no-one with their claims that the Scottish NHS cannot be damaged by Westminster cuts".

Mr Thomson said: "It is no surprise that already more than 230,000 Labour supporters have said they will vote Yes on September 18 and I have no doubt that this is due in no small part to the sheer hypocrisy of Darling, Lamont and now Jack McConnell.

"Today, to support their Tory partners in the No campaign, they say Scotland's NHS faces no threat from Westminster.

"Yet they have said the exact opposite in previous campaigns. Labour MPs, including Alastair Darling, got elected campaigning on the threat that the Tories at Westminster pose to funding for our public services.

"Now they are asking us to trust the Westminster Tories with the future of our NHS."

Yesterday, the Yes and No campaigns set out rival visions on the NHS.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish Greens co-convener Patrick Harvie argued a Yes vote would "save Scotland's NHS" on a visit to Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary.

But Lord McConnell called on the nationalists to withdraw their "big huge lie" about the health service at a Better Together event in Edinburgh.

Lord McConnell said: "After four different First Ministers and five different Health Ministers our Parliament's record on health is without question our own responsibility and has been achieved without interference. The idea that home rule inside the UK threatens the Scottish NHS is a lie."

Mr Thomson said: "The deception here is clearly theirs.

"They cannot seriously expect Labour supporters to believe that while their colleagues in England and Wales are pointing up the damage to the NHS because of Westminster Tory cuts that somehow, magically, there would be no similar impact here given that Scotland depends on its funding from a Westminster block grant."

Scottish Labour said "more SNP hypocrisy was revealed" today amid reports that "8,000 NHS staff are on zero-hour contracts" and claims that First Minister Alex Salmond "personally backed the controversial TTIP trade deal which Yes campaigners say will lead to the privatisation of the NHS in Scotland".

Health spokesman Neil Findlay said: "The fact that thousands of workers are on bank contracts, which we know now are often just zero-hours contracts by disguise, is a damning indictment of the SNP's sticking-plaster approach to managing the NHS."

He added: "The SNP's attempts to scare the sick and the vulnerable into voting Yes have badly backfired while NHS staff being let down by the Scottish Government will see right through this hypocrisy."

Meanwhile, Better Together has circulated a poll by a pro-independence group which found "more women in Scotland believe our NHS is better protected as part of the UK than it would be under independence".

The Survation poll of over 1,000 women, commissioned by Women for Independence, found that 42% believed "the NHS in Scotland would be safer in the UK" compared to 32.5% who believed it would be safer as part of a separate Scotland.

Scottish Labour social justice spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: "The nationalists' own poll has exposed the fact that their scare stories on the NHS aren't working. The real risk to the NHS in Scotland is the £6 billion extra cuts the experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies say would be needed in the first few years after independence."