Scotland would face "austerity until doomsday" if the country became independent, former prime minister Gordon Brown has claimed.

He spoke as he called for politicians north and south of the border to increase investment in the NHS, saying it needed an injection of new cash similar to that provided by Tony Blair's Labour government.

He claimed it doubled NHS spending between 1997 and 2010.

Speaking at a Labour rally for the NHS in Glasgow, Mr Brown, who served as chancellor under Mr Blair, recalled: "In 1997 when we came into power the National Health Service was dying on its feet.

"So we had to take action and we did put in the biggest single tax rise in history, £9bn extra for the National Health Service, health service spending rising by 5% a year as a result of it - 30,000 more doctors, 80,000 more nurses, half the hospitals in this country rebuilt or repaired so that they were fit for the modern era.

"I believe that this is what we have got to do again, because 20 years after we came into power in 1997 the health service is in disrepair again."

Under the Conservative government in Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood, the NHS has seen its worst decade for spending growth since its creation in 1948, Mr Brown claimed.

He warned: "You look now at the Scottish National Party's proposals for independence, they will not be spending money on the health service this decade, they wouldn't be spending it in the next decade and they wouldn't be spending it the decade after.

"Austerity is here until doomsday if the Scottish National Party is all that is going to confront it."

He referred to new analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies which concluded an independent Scotland could face another decade of public spending restraint.

Mr Brown warned that the think tank's work showed "spending on vital services like the health service would rise even slower in the coming decade if we had independence than under the present decade where money has been so short".