My father waited 15 HOURS in A&E and if we hadn't emailed the chief exec who knows how long we would have been there

Political outcry after cancer-stricken Peter's hell

- BY SALLY HIND

A GRANDAD dying from cancer was kept waiting for 15 hours in A&E until a health board boss was forced to intervene.

Peter Black, 71, who suffers from stage 4 cancer, is one of the latest victims of the country's hospital waiting times crisis after being taken to Wishaw General with alarming symptoms by worried relatives at 6.30pm on Saturday.

The grandfather-of-five, from Motherwell, wasn't seen until 9.30am the next day.

Peter's daughter Nicola, who stayed with her dad during his mammoth wait for care, said the former joiner was only seen after a family member emailed the health board's chief executive to complain.

The case has been branded "utterly heartbreaking" by MSPs, who said it should be a "wake-up call" for Scotland's Health Secretary Neil Gray.

Nicola, 47, said: "My dad had been vomiting and there was blood in his urine. We told them exactly what was happening and we sat there from 6.30pm on Saturday evening.

"We watched people come and go who couldn't string a sentence together. We saw people threatening people next to them and as time was going on and we saw people come in and out before us.

"By 3am dad said 'I'm going to go home, I've had enough'.

"But we'd sat there long enough by then, so I said we needed to stay.