Junior doctors want law to enforce 56-hour week

JUNIOR doctors voted yesterday for legislation which would make it illegal for them to work for longer than 56 hours a week.

Amid mounting frustration over their 1991 'New Deal', which is intended to eliminate contracts of more than 72 hours by the end of this year, they called on the British Medical Association to press for primary legislation to prevent them being required to work for more than an average of 56 hours a week.

Speaking at the annual conference of the BMA junior doctors' committee in London, Dr Andrew Hobart, representative for East Anglia, said that statements by Dr Brian Mawhinney, Minister for Health, that the New Deal was working, were not true.

In Peterborough, Dr Mawhinney's constituency, two registrars in neurology were contracted to work a 92- hour week, eight junior doctors in anaesthetics were working 83-hour weeks, and senior house officers in obstetrics 79 hours a week. A recent BMA junior doctors' survey has shown that substantial numbers of them are still working over the 83- hour limit which should have been eliminated at the end of last year.