About 500 doctors will hold a sit-in protest outside the Legislative Council Complex in Tamar this afternoon against the administration rushing through laws to reform the Medical Council.

Lawmakers will continue the second reading of the reform bill today, which will change the composition of the council in a bid to speed up procedures and increase transparency.

But the bill has met fierce opposition from doctors as they fear the chief executive and the government will use the legislation to tighten their grip on the profession.

More lawmakers have voiced opposition to the bill, including Labour Party and Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre members, who indicated yesterday they will vote No today.

The Civic Party will veto the bill.

The Democratic Party has not decided if it will support the government bill, which is likely to pass, but urged the government to accept Kwok Ka-ki's amendment to add four elected doctors.

Kwok said he is not happy about the government's "concession" as he said not every doctor is a member of the Academy of Medicine.

It is the first time doctors have taken their opposition to Legco. Last October they protested to call for a pay rise at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

It is also a rare union of private and public hospital doctors.

The Hong Kong Medical Association secured a letter of no objection from the police to hold the protest from 2pm to 8pm. The turnout quoted in the application was 500 people.

Vice chairman Alvin Chan Yee- shing said the group made the application yesterday after Legco president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing threw out all 110,000 amendments tabled by medical sector lawmaker Leung Ka-lau on Saturday.

"Many of the amendments are important," Chan said. "We find it unacceptable the Legco president called all of them frivolous or meaningless."

Joining the sit-in will be the medical students' union from the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University, the Hong Kong Doctors' Union, Hong Kong Public Doctors' Association and Medecins Inspires.

Medical Council member Gabriel Choi Kin and Hong Kong University microbiologist Ho Pak-leung have said they will join the protest.

The Medical Council has 28 members, half of them elected and half appointed. The government's initial proposal suggested bringing up the number of council members to 32 by adding four appointed lay members on top of the original four.

All eight lay members will be appointed by the chief executive.

The proposal faced a backlash from the profession as critics say it would also affect the balance of elected and appointed members. Since then the government has made amendments, suggesting keeping the ratio of elected and appointed members at 1:1 by changing two existing appointed doctors' seats to elected ones. The Hong Kong Academy of Medicine will be responsible for electing the members.

However, doctors remain skeptical, saying the academy is small and could be more easily manipulated by the government than other professional bodies. They are also worried that the council would open the gates to non- local doctors.

"The association is strongly against the government's attempt to step up control of the Medical Council in the name of 'reform,' paving the way to import to the city non-locally trained doctors who may not be up to standard," the Hong Kong Public Doctors Association stated.

Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-man said he was unhappy to see the doctors' "siege" of Legco and pointed out misconceptions among members of the profession. He said any measure to relax licensing standards would require amendments to other regulations.

Council reform is necessary to further speed up the handling of complaints. Ko said there are about 900 complaints in the queue.

However, singer Peter Cheung Shung-tak thinks there should not be a further delay to the reform bill. Cheung and his wife spent years fighting for justice over the death of their newborn son in 2005.

The doctor responsible was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Medical Council only nine years later.