27.04.11
UK must ‘prioritise patients’ – MP
The European Working Time Directive is ‘compromising’ care, a Conservative MP has claimed. Opening a Westminster Hall debate, Charlotte Leslie suggested that an alternative way of protecting workers should be found.
She said the directive was “eroding that professional ethos which upholds the NHS and beginning to replace it by a clock on, clock off culture”.
It was hoped the directive would stop people like junior doctors working 100-hour weeks.
Leslie added: “Patient safety is being seriously jeopardised on a day-to-day basis. Lives are being put at risk because of Brussels bureaucracy. It doesn’t even begin to protect those workers it says it was designed to protect. There are ways in other countries of getting round this.
“We have a choice as to whether we prioritise political process in Europe or whether we prioritise patients and put everything into finding some kind of way to give patients the care they deserve and the professionals the respect they deserve.”
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