The Government has abandoned its computer-based system for junior doctor jobs, in an embarrassing about-turn by Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary.

In a move apparently designed to outflank a legal action by junior doctors due to be heard in court today, Ms Hewitt told Parliament yesterday that the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) would not be used for the second round of interviews.

Her announcement did not impress RemedyUK, the junior doctors’ group which is bringing the action. It said that if the first round were allowed to stand, 80 per cent of training posts would be determined on the basis of a faulty system. Good candidates would have been denied a fair chance, and poor ones accepted because of the vagaries of MTAS.

“She is hoping people will consider this is a concession,” said Matt Jamieson-Evans, of RemedyUK. “It is not. Abandoning the MTAS system is not really news, as far as we are concerned. It hasn’t worked for the past three weeks, so saying it won’t be used in the second round is meaningless.

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Nothing was done to prevent the events of this year, which left many junior doctors without training positions

Nigel Hawkes

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• Hewitt was slow off the mark

“The point is that the majority of jobs will be decided on the basis of the first round, which was flawed. So of course we are going ahead with the legal action.”

Ms Hewitt may be hoping that when initial offers under the first round of the system are made to doctors in the next few weeks the steam will dissipate from the issue.

Under her proposals, the second round will be conducted on conventional lines, with doctors providing CVs to individual deaneries who will arrange interviews at a local level. Only doctors who have been unsuccessful in the first round will go on to the second.

Ms Hewitt said in a written statement: “Given the continuing concerns of junior doctors about MTAS, the system will not be used for matching candidates to training posts, but will continue to be used for national monitoring.”

A report detailing alleged security breaches of the online recruitment system for junior doctors has also been passed to the police, Ms Hewitt said.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: “This is a massive and embarrassing admission of failure.

“The massive disruption caused could have been avoided if the Government had listened to health professionals’ warnings at the start.

“Ministers instead ploughed on regardless with a doomed system, threatening the careers of young doctors and causing serious concern to patients.”

But the British Medical Association gave Ms Hewitt’s scheme its backing.

While Andrew Rowland, vice-chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, was strongly critical of the department’s handling of the affair, he said that scrapping the system at this stage, after thousands of interviews, would be “disastrous for doctors, for patients, and for the NHS”.

“These offers represent the only hope for thousands of doctors of having decent NHS careers, and the only realistic way of ensuring enough of them are in post on August 1,” he added.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “There is a danger that patient care will be jeopardised by the Government’s failure to secure a smooth transition to new posts in August.”

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