EU Working Time Directive (NHS)

Debate between Charlotte Leslie and Lord Wharton of Yarm

Thursday 26th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend anticipates a point that I will come to later. I pay tribute to the work of John Black and others on this issue. If there was only one target that the NHS should enshrine, it is continuity of care, because after that so many things follow.

European Court of Justice rulings—I do not want to be too technical, but they are the SiMAP and Jaeger rulings—have caused tremendous problems for the profession. First, inactive on-call work is required to be counted as working time. Therefore, if a doctor is on call but inactive and perhaps sleeping on the premises, it is counted as on-call time, which makes life very difficult for hospital trusts organising rotas and getting the time available. Secondly, if a doctor overstays their allocated shift, perhaps because they are about to hand over, but have to stay on for an extra hour, perhaps because a patient has had a cardiac arrest, they are required to take compensatory rest to make up for that immediately afterwards. If that doctor has a clinic some time the next day, they will have to take an hour of rest time, cancelling that clinic, because the European Court of Justice dictates that. Potentially, patients who have turned up at hospital and are ready and prepared for surgery will have their clinic cancelled because the Court ruling says that the doctor must be forced to take rest. That is obviously a tremendous inconvenience for patients, beyond continuity of care, and a nightmare for the hospitals trying to make accommodations.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She has spoken eloquently about the challenges that the rulings cause for the running of hospitals, and the problems that they cause in the care of patients. Does she agree that treating doctors in such a way, commoditising the patients they work with and clocking their work on and off damages their ability to do their job professionally, which affects their health too?

[Charlotte Leslie]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. An interesting point that I shall come to later is that the Royal College of Physicians reports that sickness rates have soared because of the stress on clinicians as a result of not being able to perform their duties with the professional excellence that they espouse. The directive has a detrimental effect on the professional ethos of the NHS, and on the individuals whom it was designed to help.