Doctors challenge web applications

The Government's controversial system for allocating junior doctors jobs came under attack at the High Court on Wednesday.

A judge was told the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) was "so conspicuously unfair as to amount to an abuse of power".

Even Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's announcement that computer-based MTAS was being abandoned did not stop the legal attack.

The junior doctors say that - far from removing the need for judicial review - "the announcement has made it yet more imperative".

Ms Hewitt told Parliament the online service would not be used for the second round of interviews.

Only doctors who have been unsuccessful in round one will go on to round two of the process.

Round two will now be CV-based, with junior doctors applying to individual deaneries who oversee training at a local level.

But the junior doctors' group Legal Remedy UK argued at London's High Court there was "no advantage whatsoever for affected doctors in reverting to a system of deanery appointments".

The removal of central preference allocation was "an unqualified blow", and the "only remaining feature of MTAS with any merit has been removed".

Remedy was challenging the legality of changes to the system initially introduced by the Department of Health's urgently convened Review Group on March 22.

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