Its either a cover up, or too much work to discover the marks for each indivual.

When we hear of people being 'missed off' of deanery lists and candidates already interviewed being asked if they want another interview in the same place for the same job it assures me that the main problem is they dont have the information to give. And certainly not the information to allow fair and proper recruitment.

Kate Giles, Kettering, NN16 9eh

The DoH might wish you to think that MTAS has been abandoned, but its input lives on unless the whole current interview procedure is abandoned. The faulty information has been accepted for the interviews that have already taken place, to the disadvantage of excellent candidates, including Dr Nortley. The endless spinning and proposterous claim that MTAS was an exam, essentially done to avoid sensible and constructive criticism of this ludicrous state of affairs leaves no-one in doubt over the political basis for bludgeoning through this failure. And now potential for prosecution! Oh what a tangled web we weave...... Ms Hewitt should resign immediately.

David L. Cox, Loggerheads, UK

Applying through MTAS was akin to taking apart in a lottery in a particularly neat sense: During judicial review proceedings brought by RemedyUK (the junior doctors' action group), the Dept. of Health were forced to admit that the MTAS matching algorithm (the part that matches candidates to interviews) was 'not reliable'. In the sense relevant here, 'not reliable' means 'random' (or like a lottery).

More damningly, the DoH knew in April already that MTAS was 'not reliable', yet they persisted with it and if the judge finds against RemedyUK tomorrow, the first doctors that were randomly selected for training will start in August.

I can't think of any other profession that would accept this: make 30 000 entrants to your profession all put their names on a webpage and ramdomly select about half for promotion. Yet this is exactly what the DoH - with the connivance of the BMA - is making doctors go through.

Ben Kotzee, Watford, Herts

This isn't just about junior doctors jobs, it is about keeping the best doctors in the UK. MTAS has been so bad that most of the Junior Doctors I know (and a dedicated, caring and hard-working bunch they are too) - have applied for and been offered jobs in Australia , New Zealand and - in one case - South Africa.

Oz and NZ are picking the cream of our crop, the ones with good CVs and good experience. In the UK we get to keep the ones "selected" by a scoring system even the Department of Health admits doesn't work.

Call me selfish, but I want the best of our trainees here, not there.

No wonder the DoH is covering its tracks as fast as it can, and burying it's mistakes as deep as possible.

Benedicta Warsop, Keighley, UK

Quite possibly neither those who sat, or those who set what we now know to have been an exam may have been aware of that at the time, as the need for it to be an exam, (possibly to meet certain data protection criteria) may not, at that time, have arisen.

Looking at the positives from this, there would have been little opportunity for over-preparation for the exam to bias the results, and little incentive for leakage of the questions, or, in this case, diagrams of boxes to be ticked (or not).

Those who fret over the ever-rising pass rates of school exams may be able to share learnings from the outcome here. Uncertainty as to whether a box-ticking event is or is not an exam as such might usefully be part of the test itself, with self-validation compensating for system bias. There’s also a direct saving of the cost of qualified Invigilators, and candidates might appreciate the informality of the event, though possibly not the result.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

Ohhh, so now it is all an xam!
This is Horror to my ears.
I thought that in order to prepare for an exam a professional should know about it!
We all thought it was an application form, which yes puts in the spotlight the capabilities of us junior doctors, including our knowledge, but does not assess our pure knowledge.
I thought that an exam was supposed to have a sort of Curriculum, and i thought that in order to prepare for an exam we should be given at least some guidance, literature and most of all PRACTICE.
I am beginning to think at what strange game is DoH playing?

Vincenzo Giordano, London, UK

Shouldn't candidates know BEFORE they sit an exam, that it is, indeed, an exam?!!!!

I thought it was an application form!!!

Unprecedented mess!, Hastings, UK

So, if this procedure were an 'examination,' may interested parties be treated to published results, pass and fail statistics, invigilation reports, and, in the interests of equality legislation, some kind of performance analysis by ethnicity in respect of the language competency and form-filling tests.

It would also be of interest, from a value-for-money perspective, to have some kind of cost benefit breakdown.

Any consequential breakdown of NHS staff numbers or morale might usefully be brought to separate account.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

An exam?! So, do the doctors get little certificates if they get shortlisted?

Ben, London, UK

hmmm.. It seems like MTAS's results are like the rest of the NHS - a bit of a lottery.
A very expensive random number generator. Perhaps Hewtt should apply for a refund from the IT contractor.

Edwin Thornber, Bucharest, Romania

Further astonishing revelations. The government has been in such a rush to downgrade and disempower the medical profession that it has scored an own goal. Some of the software for the MTAS system hadn't even been completed let alone tested! The DH has tried to block doctors from seeing why they have not been shortlisted because they knew that the system had failed and wanted to keep it for as quiet as possible so that the next phase of MMC (modernising medical careers) could be forced through. More worryingly the "independent" Review Group also knew this, but instead of calling for MTAS to be abandoned weeks ago, which would have given time for a fairer appproach as suggested by RemedyUK, they fudged badly and unfairly.
This is one of the most shameful episodes in the medical profession's history and more heads will roll. Carol Black and Liam Donaldson for starters. Hewitt is finished already.

Dr Clive Peedell, Nr Bedale, UK

The computer system was abandonned. The consequences (the shortlisting process) of it have continued to go ahead despite its gross failings. To state that MTAS was abandonned does not acknowlegde that facts that current shortlisting still stands as some people have 4 interviews and some have 1 chance to get into training. Do not believe government spin on all this. There is still a strong political imperative to ensure that it is seen to work despite its complete failure.

Maria Armstrong, London,