Medics sleep in tents for housing protest

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A group of medics will set up tents near Regent's Park to demonstrate against the decision to charge them for staying in hospital flats.

Medical students from St George's University, UCL, King's and St Thomas' protested outside London hospitals last month against the decision which will leave them more than £6,000 worse off.

Today doctors at the British Medical Association voted to push for a pay rise for junior doctors to make up for the loss. Free rooms for their first year in the job have been provided since 1983, but this will be abolished in August in England and Scotland.

Ian Noble, chairman of the medical students committee, will sleep in a tent outside the BMA's annual conference in Edinburgh tonight to launch the protest. He said: "Medical students feel betrayed by a government purporting to encourage the poorest in our society into university and particularly into the medical profession." Hundreds of doctors are expected to join the tent protest in London on 18 July.

Mr Noble said medical students leave university with an average of £21,000 of debt. With the introduction of top-up fees the BMA predicts students starting medical school will have debts of £37,000.

Matthew Forbes, a newly qualified medical student, will start work at a central London hospital this summer. He is £35,000 in debt and will be charged £7,200 a year if he moves into his hospital accommodation, which he did not want to name.

"I am going to struggle badly to pay for living costs as well as service this debt," he said. "This further devalues the job of junior doctors."

It comes as Welsh health minister Edwina Hart today announced that free accommodation will continue to be available in Wales.