Mr. Andrew Barnes:

The key thing is who would you rather be operated on by? The doctor who has been working ten hours a day and is tired and stressed, or the doctor and the nurse who are refreshed, healthy and able to deliver a high quality of healthcare? One of the problems is we already know our doctors and nurses are not working seven days a week, albeit our health system works seven days a week. That is just a question of scheduling. Will we need more doctors and nurses under a four-day week, reduced hours concept? Absolutely. The Government then has to look at the quality of the healthcare service being produced. We find there is a shortage of doctors and nurses in healthcare. All of them are coming out of the industry because they are burnt out. If you can maintain them, you will not have to continually recruit, retrain or bring in temporary nurses or doctors to fill gaps. If the profession is made more attractive, you are likely not only to get better outcomes from health but you will be better able to deliver it.

The key thing here is we all assume it will not work in this or that area. I can probably point the committee to an employer or industry somewhere in the world that is working a four-day week very successfully because it has just reimagined how it is to deliver that service.