Hewitt battles for survival in Commons after day of criticism over MTAS flawed dreadful mess

The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, battled for her political reputation, if not her survival, yesterday in a packed Commons debate on a Tory motion of no confidence. It came at the end of a day which featured severe criticism from a high court judge over the junior doctors debacle, and angry scenes at the annual conference of NHS midwives .

Ministers were out in force to support their colleague as she defended her record in the face of taunts from Andrew Lansley, the Conservative health spokesman, who said she had "no credibility left" and had "lost the confidence of the NHS".

Ms Hewitt said it was "one of the greatest privileges" to be health secretary and insisted she was not taking any lectures from the Tories, who had "starved" the NHS of funds.

Earlier in the day, a high court judge had rejected the junior doctors' legal challenge to a controversial online job application scheme, but added his voice to the torrent of criticism that has engulfed the government, calling the scheme's introduction "disastrous" and "a dreadful mess".

Mr Justice Goldring said many junior doctors had "an entirely justifiable sense of grievance" and raised the spectre of thousands of disappointed young doctors heading for employment tribunals, where some of them may have good grounds to take a future complaint. He said he only reluctantly awarded the health secretary her £45,000 costs.

"The fact that the claimant has failed in what was accepted to be an unprecedented application so far as the law is concerned does not mean that many junior doctors do not have an entirely justifiable sense of grievance," the judge said, dismissing the case brought by a group of junior doctors called Remedy UK.

"The premature introduction of MTAS has had disastrous consequences. It was a flawed system in the ways I have indicated."

The failures of the online medical training application scheme first became apparent when thousands of highly qualified applicants for posts leading to consultant jobs failed to get a single interview.

From:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2086708,00.html

On April 30, 2007 Health Direct posted: Contender for greatest of all NHS failures- MTAS Junior Doctor application system when the crisis that is leading highly qualified junior doctors to head abroad is the result of one of the National Health Service's all-time great administrative cock-ups.

It is has left 30,000 junior doctors bitterly disillusioned and angry. But it also has big potential implications for patient care.

Last week (May 16, 2007) started to see the results of this fiasco when Health Direct posted: Doctors MTAS online application system may be ditched in another Hewitt U turn when Channel 4 interviewed the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt over the crisis surrounding the appointment of thousands of junior doctors.

The new Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) was heralded by the labour government as an 'agent of change', designed to establish a fairer, more transparent system for recruiting the next generation of specialist medics. But for months now it's been ridiculed within medical circles for effectively deselecting some of the brightest junior doctors.

The new Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) was heralded by thelabour government as an 'agent of change', designed to establish a fairer, more transparent system for recruiting the next generation of specialist medics.

But for months now it's been ridiculed within medical circles for effectively deselecting some of the brightest junior doctors.