Why was the controversial Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) set up in the first place?

It was part of a new system for appointing doctors to training posts. The suspicion was that an "old boy" network existed, whereby consultants appointed their own juniors, disadvantaging applicants from other regions, and women. The old system was akin to an apprenticeship, where the apprentice-master favoured his own trainees. The new system, Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), was intended to be fair, gender-neutral, and open to all.

What were the key problems with it when it was set up?

Problems emerged last year when the first generation of MMC graduates hit the job market. The application forms they had to complete relegated academic achievement to a minor role, asking instead for applicants to boast about their leadership and team-working skills. Some poor candidates were appointed. There was a row, but nothing was done to prevent the even more damaging events of this year, which affect many more people at a later stage of their careers when they are applying for "run-through" training posts.

What will happen to those who are already going through the MTAS system from its first round now the Government has announced it will be scrapped?

The first round interviews will stand if the Government gets its way. The doctors appointed as a result of that round will take up their new posts in August. Those who were unlucky can apply again in the second round for the posts that remain, using conventional CVs rather than MTAS. But only a minority of posts will remain to be filled, so junior doctors say the injustice will not have been put right.

How many doctors are believed to have been left without jobs this year as a result of the failures?

Impossible to say, such is the chaotic nature of MTAS. There are probably (figures differ) around 20,000 training posts for around 32,000 applicants. These who do not get training posts will not necessarily be out of work. Some of them are already working in the NHS in staff jobs - which do not involve training towards a consultant post - and many are foreign applicants, perhaps as many as 10,000. The political risk for the Government is that these foreign applicants will get many of the training posts, leaving UK-born doctors who have been encouraged to take up medicine in a dead-end job. Because the system is "blinded", it is impossible to tell from the applications where the candidates hail from.

What system will replace it?

For the second round, doctors will apply to individual deaneries, each of which covers a particular area of the country, sending their CVs. They will be interviewed in a conventional manner, and appointed on merit to work in particular hospitals. This is how the system always worked, until the social engineers decided it was altogether too cosy a set-up and decided on the "Year-Zero" approach of MTAS.

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