The NHS will suffer if students are discouraged from studying medicine by high tuition fees, argues shadow health minister Tim Loughton.

One of the groups likely to be hardest hit by the government’s new policy of tuition fees will of course be medical students, though their plight went largely overlooked by ministers in last week’s great debate.

They already have the highest level of debt among undergraduates. Now, at its worst, the BMA calculate that a London medical student whose parents earn £30,000 between them could leave university owing up to £64,661 - some three times the basic salary of a first year junior doctor. For a student coming from a family with a residual income of £20,000 they will be committing themselves to almost double the debt faced by a three year degree course student (£55,592 vs. £29,314).

It is not difficult to see why. Laboratory based subjects such as medicine, are among the most expensive courses with teaching costs per student of around £10,500 pa likely to attract the maximum fee. Spread across a six year course, obviously living costs pile up for longer and academic years 4-6 are 50 weeks long compared to 30 weeks.

Medical students also have above average expenses such as travel to hospital sites, costly text books and equipment. Because of the longer hours involved, they also have precious few opportunities to take holiday and weekend work to supplement their overdrafts.

At a time when, for all the extra public funding, the government are struggling to recruit any appreciable net increase in doctors, particularly in general practice, such a hefty financial disincentive will surely only exacerbate that problem.

Medicine will increasingly be a preserve of those from families wealthy enough to help offset such a large debt burden, doing nothing to help widen the social backgrounds of students so beloved by this social-engineering obsessed government. In addition it will prove a major bar to students who switch to medicine after their first degree, who are widely acknowledged as some of the best and most committed doctors.

The impact of higher debt levels will of course drag on for longer. Graduates will have to defer house buying for longer and will almost certainly not contemplate contributing to a pension until beyond their 30th birthday - all aspects of independent living the government are supposedly keen to promote. Rising levels of debt have also been shown to impact on health, particularly mental health.

Faced with all these added burdens it is hard to see why medicine in the future will be a more attractive prospect for students.

Some will be tempted away from their vocational instincts into the arms of higher paying city jobs which will offer to pay off their student debts sooner, if not immediately.

The BMA have warned that currently 25 per cent medical graduates are considering opting for a different career and not going on to practice medicine. Others who qualify as doctors may be tempted to alleviate their debt problems by forsaking the NHS for more private practice, company posts or jobs abroad.

All in all the government appear to have scored a massive own goal. As the redoubtable Guy’s medical student Julia Prague suggested to the PM to his face, no amount of bleating about doctors being subsidised by dustmen will help the health service with its acute skills shortage.

This article first appeared in the ePolitixPlus health sector bulletin.