MTAS has been ditched. It will no longer be used to match junior doctors to specialist training posts. Ministers have realised that it is simply not fit for purpose.

Let me remind you what Patricia Hewitt said on Question Time on BBC One on 8th May 2007 (or remind yourself using the video mini-video on the right, or see the full-size version here):

If a minister is responsible for a major policy blunder or acts unethically then of course they should go.

Patricia Hewitt oversaw the introduction of a massively expensive computer system for matching junior doctors to specialist training posts. It has failed. It has spewed out intimate personal details of applicants onto publicly accessible parts of the web. And now it’s been ditched.

How is that not a ‘major policy blunder’?

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This is exactly the point I made to Patricia Hewitt in my email to her straight after the Question Time program via their website (when she said she would respond to ALL questions). Perhaps unsuprisingly I have not yet received an answer and my question has so far not been deemed ‘representative enough’ to appear on the website. Either that or she has no reasonable answer!

» This comment was received at 15:42 on 16 May 07

I’m glad you point out she said she’d answer all the questions – I thought I must have misheard, given that they only put three on the website. Clearly, Patricia Hewitt underestimated the strength of feeling on the issue once again, and didn’t realise she’d get thousands of questions.

» This comment was received at 07:22 on 17 May 07

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