The First Minister has said she “100%” stands by her claim Kezia Dugdale told her last year she would drop her party’s opposition to a second independence referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon apparently revealed details of a private conversation she had with the Scottish Labour leader shortly after the UK’s Brexit vote during STV’s live general election debate on Tuesday.

Dugdale has called the claim a “categoric lie”, while Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson branded Sturgeon a “clype”.

As party leaders clashed at the final First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood before Thursday’s general election, Davidson asked the SNP leader “why she believes private conversations shouldn’t stay private?”

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Sturgeon responded: “Well actually I do believe that, but of course the conversation that Ruth Davidson is alluding to was taken from the private sphere, not by me but by Kezia Dugdale.

“The fact of this conversation and a very selective account of the content of that was first put into the public domain on February 23 in the Times newspaper, where it said Ms Dugdale revealed that she held secret talks with the First Minister.

“That is what gave me the ability to talk about that.

“The part, of course, in that conversation that Kezia Dugdale didn’t refer to was the part I spoke about last night and stand by 100%.”

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In the February article published in the Times, the Scottish Labour leader revealed she and Sturgeon had “talked at length about how horrified we were at the result of the referendum” on EU membership.

She was quoted as saying: “I pledged at that point to do everything I could, with the powers I had, to support Scotland having as strong a relationship with the rest of Europe as possible.”

But Dugdale took to Twitter to dismiss Sturgeon’s debate as a “categoric lie” which “shows how desperate she is”.

Having earlier called the First Minister a “clype” on the campaign trail, Davidson told the Holyrood chamber: “Everybody now knows – don’t have a private chat with this First Minister, because if it suits her purposes, everybody will get to hear about it.”

Sturgeon countered by attacking the Scottish Tory leader, who tweeted on Tuesday night that she had recorded her own private conversation with Sturgeon after the Brexit vote before quickly deleting the tweet.

The SNP leader said: “People should think twice, of course, about having any conversation with Ruth Davidson, because if her Twitter account is anything to go by she records it for later use. Although, I notice that tweet was hastily deleted last night.”

She continued: “If anybody reads what Labour and Kezia Dugdale were saying in public around that time they will see the ring of truth about it.

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“Labour themselves were saying that all options including an independence referendum were under consideration. That is the reality.

Later in proceedings, Dugdale was chastised by the presiding officer for using unparliamentary language in heated exchanges with the First Minister over health.

She attacked the Scottish Government’s record on the NHS, saying it faced the highest-ever number of nursing and midwifery vacancies due to Sturgeon’s decision to “slash” places for student nurses and midwives when she was health secretary between 2007 and 2012.

Sturgeon responded that there were now 12,000 more people working in the NHS than when the SNP took office, prompting Dugdale to say: “So, there are enough nurses in the health service? That’s the latest fib from the First Minister.”

The Labour leader continued: “Yet more fake news from the First Minister.

“Here’s the reality – missed A&E targets, operations cancelled because of pressure on NHS staff and resources, and thousands of patients trapped in hospital when they are fit to go home.

“That should shame the First Minister, except we know that nothing really does.”

Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh rebuked her for the use of the word “fib”, calling it unparliamentary language and asking her to be respectful to others in the chamber.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie also attacked Sturgeon on health, calling figures in a new report on waiting times for specialist mental services “appalling”.

Data covering the first three months of this year revealed waiting times targets for specialist mental health care are not being met for more than a quarter of adults and one in six youngsters.

Rennie said: “Yesterday, the NHS report on mental health services for young people was appalling.

“I thought I’d got the First Minister on board for taking strong action to sort that. I have asked her time and again about this, I’ve heard warm words before as well.

“But the latest figures show that more young people are waiting for treatment and they are waiting for longer too. Why are things worse this year than last year?”

Sturgeon denied that was the case, pointing to improvements in the latest statistics.

She said: “We saw some improvement in terms of waiting times, we also saw that ten of the 14 health boards across Scotland are meeting the 18-week standard, which is up from only seven in the last quarter.

“Yes, there were a number of young people waiting over a year for treatment, which is unacceptable.

“That was 74 people (1.7%) but again that is down from 2.4% in the final quarter of 2016.

“We have, like many other countries do, got challenges to address in terms of meeting the increased demand for mental health but because of the investment we are making, and because of the mental health strategy that we are pursuing, we are seeing progress and we are determined to continue making that progress.”