Dobson issues health warning on fees

HEALTH secretary Frank Dobson is understood to have warned education officials that plans to charge Pounds 1,000 annual university tuition fees might undermine attempts to attract students into the medical professions. His concerns mirror those of Steve Tomlinson, secretary of the Council of Heads of University Medical Schools, who last week said he believed the introduction of fees and the replacement of grants with loans could put students off taking the longer five or six-year degrees necessary for medicine.