Labour MPs have demanded Scottish ministers "get a grip" on the NHS during a hospital visit.

The party's Scottish leader Jim Murphy spoke to staff on a tour of the Royal Alexandra Hospital (RAH) in Paisley, Renfrewshire, with local MPs Douglas Alexander and Gemma Doyle.

They said the Scottish Government should apologise for the "crisis" that has hit the hospital and threatens others in Scotland.

And they called on ministers to publish NHS figures more regularly to improve transparency.

A specialist support team has been drafted in to the RAH after it emerged the hospital was struggling to meet accident and emergency waiting times.

Concerns were raised last month when an advert was posted on social media looking for volunteers to help out in the NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde hospital's A&E department.

Mr Murphy said: "What we discovered today is probably worse than we thought it was, and also that it's more widespread than one hospital.

"There now seems to be a growing crisis in Scotland's A&E departments. Scottish Government ministers have got to apologise to the patients of Scotland and to the staff in our NHS because they have taken their eye off the ball.

"The problem seems to be there aren't enough beds, in many hospitals and in many A&E departments there aren't enough nurses and staff, so Labour's plan for 1,000 extra NHS nurses to alleviate some of that pressure would be a big help."

He added: "The NHS is our most important public service and yet SNP government ministers just don't seem as interested in the NHS as patients would like them to be.

"They need to change things. They need to get the investment in, recruit more nurses, free up the beds and get a grip of a crisis that is entirely unacceptable."

Mr Murphy said NHS figures needed reporting more frequently "to break away from the secret NHS that is developing here in Scotland".

Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP Mr Alexander said: "The staff here are doing an outstanding job - they are a dedicated, life-saving group of people but they are being let down by an Edinburgh government that has taken its eye off the ball in relation to emergency medicine in recent months.

"What the clinicians told me is that this is a crisis that has been developing over many months and I'm afraid Renfrewshire patients are suffering the consequences.

"In recent weeks this hospital has literally been full, it has been necessary for patients to travel down to Inverclyde, to the Southern General in Glasgow because the hospital has been working at capacity.

"That's why I think the health minister of Scotland requires to make an apology to the people of Renfrewshire. This was a predictable crisis.

"The announcement we heard yesterday, I fear, is too little and too late."

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said A&E departments across Scotland and the UK had faced a ''challenging" winter.

She said yesterday: ''Why we've taken the action of sending a support team into the Royal Alexandria Hospital is because we are concerned we're not seeing the degree of recovery in that hospital that we are seeing at other hospitals and that we would be expecting.

''What we need to do is ensure the better working practices, the way patients are being taken through A&E that are working well in some hospitals, are being applied in all hospitals. That's one of the things the support team we have sent to the Royal Alexandra will be helping the local management to achieve.''