NHS UNDER ATTACK FROM PLAN TO USE PRIVATE GPs FOR OUT-OF-HOURS SERVICE

GOVERNMENT proposals to use private doctors to offer out-of-hours family healthcare represent a deliberate and disingenuous attack on the NHS, London Euro-MP Jean Lambert has warned.

Policy guidance due to be issued today will transfer responsibility for out-of-hours GP services from individual surgeries to Primary HealthCare Trusts, who are likely to use private practitioners for night-time and week-end consultations.

Mrs Lambert, Green Party MEP for London and parliamentary spokesperson on cross-border health provision, said the guidance represented an attack on the principle that the NHS should deliver the UK's government-funded GP services.

She said: "These proposals give a formal role to private GP services in providing public healthcare services in the UK.

"The government has used fears over the impact of EU working time rules as a Trojan Horse for expanding the role of private healthcare in public health delivery - but this is based on a disingenuous, and quite deliberate, misinterpretation of the rules.

"Some sections of the media have stirred up fears that ending the UK's opt-out of the EU Working Time Directive - which will limit the average
maximum working week to 48 hours - would prevent GPs offering out-of-hours services.

"The government has seized on this euro-myth to push its privatization agenda, though the truth is that few GPs would be covered by the proposals - being managers rather than employees - and that a solution could be found within the NHS."

The Working Time Directive, which has received the backing of health unions and the TUC, is designed to protect workers from the negative health impact of Britain's long hours culture, and to protect patients from accidental ill-treatment at the hands of exhausted healthcare professionals.

Mrs Lambert, who is also a member of the European Parliament's Employment and Social Affairs Committee, added: "This is a clear example of the Government promoting disinformation about the Working Time Directive to promote its stalling agenda of opening up public healthcare to private business.

"To do so on ideological rather than practical grounds is inefficient, costly - and runs counter to the Government's own stated commitment to
providing world-class public services. "There is no reason why the limited additional pressure on family healthcare services could not be met from within the public sector."

ENDS

Editors' Note: For more detailed analysis of the EU Working Time Directive and its impact on the UK see Mrs Lamberts' recent report 'Flexible Working: A Work-Life balance or a Balancing Act' available on request or at www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk

For more information please contact Ben on 01273 671946, 07973 823358 or at press@greenmeps.org.uk