Hospitals in Britain are being deprived of doctors and patients’ lives are being put in danger because of new European Union laws, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned.

“Cuts in doctors’ working hours to meet EU rules could be costing lives,” said a study issued by the RCS. According to the study, almost two-thirds of the 800 NHS surgeons questioned said they thought quality of care had worsened since the implementation of the European working time directive.

The RCS study said some doctors had been forced to break rules to maintain levels of care because the 48-hour working week limit has left hospitals stretched.

RCS president John Black said: “We now have the ridiculous situation where the Department of Health in public moralises over fears that trainees are being coerced into working over 48 hours while privately relying on these doctors to stay longer or cover additional dead-end shifts as locums because there is no way the service could keep running otherwise.”

More than 100 hospital rotas have applied for permission to break the rules because they are so stretched, according to the study.

According to the RCS survey, 62 percent of surgeons said they were not complying with a 48-hour week and half of consultants said compliance with the European regulation had been achieved at the expense of patient safety.

“Throughout this affair the call from the Department of Health has been that this legislation is about making patients safer,” Mr Black said.

“We now have a clear message from the front line that patient care is being made significantly less safe through systems that lead to poor continuity of care, the loss of teams and ‘wildcat’ closure of services.”

He said trainee surgeons across the country were staying on unpaid after the hours limit because they wanted to see through care for patients.

And they were taking on additional paid locum work in the hope of gaining the training opportunities they could not get in their formal working week, he added.

Patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents said: “If the feedback from the Royal College of Surgeons is true, and we have no reason to believe that it isn’t, this is extremely worrying and, frankly, scandalous.

“There can be no excuse for allowing patient safety to be compromised and patients to be harmed needlessly.”