Mr. Martin Varley:

I add that in a survey last week of 300 newly appointed consultants one third indicated that they had issues with the fact that their working week exceeded their contractual obligations significantly. In general, consultants are not paid overtime for working beyond their contracted hours. I do not even know of a situation where a consultant was paid overtime. Consultants can regularly work 10% or 20% of their hours overtime without pay, while in the United Kingdom they are paid automatically. Again, the workload factor washes through in several respects such as the size of clinics, ward rounds, hours worked and so on.