GPs must not be allowed to hold patients to ransom over working hours - Jayne Dowle

She’s thinking about criminal law. I told her that if she expects to get on in this field, she had better prepare herself for pulling regular all-nighters when she’s working on a case, or called to represent a potential client at a police station.

I also reminded her that her mother cannot remember the last time she worked ‘standard’ hours. It was probably in the early 1990s, when the (male) publisher of the London magazine company I worked for would patrol the floors at 5.30pm, making sure we had all gone home.

An old-fashioned, but very thoughtful man, he was conscious that his workforce was mostly female, and concerned that many of them had families who would be waiting for their dinner.

With respect to GPs, who have passed a motion at a British Medical Association conference of local medical committees calling for the government to cut their core hours to 9am to 5pm, signalling an end to early morning and evening surgeries, they are hugely out of step with the times. I typically start work between 7am and 8am, and my inbox is already pinging with emails from contacts and editors in the same zone. I’m fortunate enough to work from home fully now, but I can often be still at the laptop at 7pm.

My son works evening and weekend shifts in a supermarket, usually not coming home until 10pm. Look at your own working hours these days and ask yourself if they’re a straight eight hours with no early starts or late finishes.

A second motion at the conference called for the withdrawal of the ‘extended hours’ contract, which came into force last month. This requires GP networks to see patients between 9am and 5pm on Saturdays and weekday evenings from 6.30pm and 8pm.

Both motions came in the wake of new figures from NHS Digital showing that hundreds of surgeries are still conducting less than half of consultations face to face.

National data shows 71.3 per cent of appointments last month were in person, still below 80.7 per cent before the pandemic. In some areas all appointments are face to face and in others only 10 per cent. This is hardly the time to start talking about reducing working hours, but of course, the GP contract is up for renewal in 2024, so family doctors are laying their cards on the table.

Dr Paul Evans, from the Gateshead and Tyneside committee, who proposed the 9 to 5 motion, said he knew “too many GPs” who refused permanent roles “because of the hours and because they cannot see a way to make it work with childcare opening hours and with family life”.

How does he think millions of other people ‘make it work’ with childcare and family life? When my two children were small, I took a part-time university teaching job to ensure the mortgage was paid every month because both their parents were self-employed.

I had to leave the house by 6.45am three days a week, and often prepared and marked work in the evenings and weekends. The other weekdays I wrote from home, and on Sundays had a newspaper deadline at 10am. Their dad was often away for work, leaving me as sole parent in charge.

The feats of so-called juggling I had to pull off were sometimes eye-watering, but by no means exceptional. There are ways to make long working hours work, if you believe in your job enough.

I also find it slightly insidious that women’s rights are somehow being used to justify the motion. It’s reported that most GPs at the conference agreed that current working hours arrangements “indirectly discriminate against GPs who wish to have families”, saying that “due to the still-patriarchal nature of English society, this is discrimination that mostly affects female GPs”.

I happen to know at least two heterosexual couples who are both GPs, raising young families, both working part-time hours to ensure their children are cared for. They come to their own arrangements within the framework set down. If you really want to make it work, you can.

Everyone who works for an organisation has to follow the rules. In so few instances do employees get to set their working hours themselves.

I recognise that GPs must undergo years of training and continuing professional development, and it’s a demanding career choice, but they are not that much of a special case. They must not be allowed to hold us all to ransom.