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Farewell & Thanks Religion As A Weapon Banking, Bankers and Government EU Arrogance - again !!Davie Goes To Strasbourg Index

by Chris Ellice - 07:57 on 06 August 2009

On Saturday 1 August 2009, new EU rules came into force in the UK which will cut junior doctors’ maximum working hours from 56 to 48 hours a week.

Combined with the existing regulations on doctors’ working hours, handed down by the European Court of Justice, the new cap on junior doctors’ hours will cost the NHS between £143 million and £293 million. For the same amount that the NHS will spend complying with the new rules, it could employ between 3,835 and 7,858 additional junior doctors, with a mean estimate of 5,400, according to new estimates.

The Government estimated in 2004 that the combination of the controversial SiMAP and Jaeger rulings, and the capping of the working week for junior doctors at 48 hours, would cost the UK economy between £380 million and £780 million. In today’s prices this cost rises to between £420 million and £862 million. This estimate is slightly lower than a similar estimate by the British Medical Association in 2004, that the new EU rules would be tantamount to losing between 4300 and 9900 junior doctors by 2009. In 2004, the Government also estimated that complying with the rules the rules would require about 1,250 additional health care staff other than doctors and between 6,250 and 12,550 additional doctors.

Based on the Government’s own Impact Assessments it was estimated in March this year that the total cost of the EU’s working time directive now runs at between £3.4 billion and £3.9 billion a year.

Popular Alliance Comment

Yet again Europe meddles on our affairs to create rules that frankly no-one wants and will squeeze the empty government coffers even further.

It should also be noted that many consultant doctors run a private clinic from their homes - we've all been offered such an alternative at hospitals when the waiting lists suggest it will be abother 6 months before we get to see a doctor - so Popular Alliance also ask :-

Will these new, shorter hours include their home work, or just mean that more of us have to pay out on top of our sky high national insurance and taxes contributions, to see the doctor who should be available to us for "free ? "

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