§ Mr. David PorterTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will set out her plans for the reduction of junior hospital doctors' hours.
§ Dr. MawhinneyThe "New Deal" for junior doctors, launched in June 1991, set a time scale for reducing the hours of duty of doctors and dentists in training. Under the "new deal", average weekly contracted hours of duty are to be reduced initially to 83 per week for those working on-call rotas, 72 per week for those working partial shifts and 60 per week for those working full shifts. This was to be done as soon as practicable but, in the light of progress to date, we announced in May that we had set a target date of 1 April 1993 for achieving this.
Average weekly contracted hours of duty are to be reduced further to a maximum of 72 per week for those in hard-pressed on-call posts, 64 per week for those working partial shifts and 56 per week for those working full shifts by 31 December 1994. Regardless of contracted hours, our intention is that no junior doctor employed on a full-time basis should normally be expected to work for more than an average of 56 hours per week by that date.
Subject to review by the ministerial group on junior doctors' hours, the aim is to reduce maximum average contracted hours of duty for on-call posts which are considered not to be hard pressed to 72 per week by the end of 1996. Doctors in higher professional training may 414W still contract for up to 83 hours per week after that date where it would be to the benefit of their training and they wish to do so, providing proper support staffing exists and the duties are not harmful either to the trainees or to patients.