Charlotte Leslie has appeared on The Politics Show in the South West, almost exactly one year after becoming MP for Bristol North West.
She spoke to presenter David Garmston about various issues which MPs currently have to face, including the continuing issue of expenses and working within the Coalition Government.
“It’s an extraordinary place, it’s a unique place,” Charlotte tells David, saying that her biggest challenge is not to get “gobbled up” by the Westminster Bubble.
Charlotte and her father Ian, a surgeon in Bristol, also appear in a film about the European Working Time Directive, a subject about which Charlotte has introuduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons in order to exempt some junior doctors.
Charlotte has introduced her bill because she says doctors in acute medical and surgical services need to work more than 48 hours a week. She said the directive was “endangering patients” and “cannot be allowed to continue”.
She said: “First, continuity of care is being eroded. Secondly, trainee doctors are being denied the training that they need.
“Thirdly, appropriate clinical expertise is not available to patients when they need it, and fourthly, I add with a certain grim irony that junior and senior doctors are more exhausted by the shift rotas that the directive imposes than they were before.”
Longer hours would allow doctors to concentrate more on patients under their care, Charlotte says.