Petition Presented to Bill Rammell MP

On Wednesday 1st March 2006, the medschoolsonline team joined representatives from the BMA medical students committee to present the graduate fees petition to Bill Rammell MP, the Minister for Higher Education. The petition was presented at the NUS mass lobby against lifting the cap on tuition fees.

During the course of the day, several speakers outlined the impact of tuition fees on different groups of students and the issues faced by university teachers. Kirsty Lloyd, the chair of the BMA's Medical Students Committee (MSC), presented the case for graduate medical students and Jeremy Durston from medschoolsonline outlined the purpose of the petition and the campaign against up front fees.

The petition was then formally presented to Bill Rammell, together with a copy of the Graduate Fees Report, by the medschoolsonline team and members of the MSC. Mr Rammell accepted the petition and agreed to meet the group to discuss the issue in the near future. We will post an update following this meeting.

We also spoke to Ed Davey MP (Liberal Democrat shadow secretary for Education and Skills) who also agreed to meet the team to discuss the issue. We also gave him a copy of the Graduate Fees Report.

We feel the day was very much a success and are extremely grateful to the NUS, the MSC, the medical students who came to support us and the thousands of people who signed the petition. We hope that we will now be able to work with ministers to redress the problem of up front fees for medical students.

We will continue to update the site with news of the campaign and action that you can take to support the issue.