The Remedy challenge arises following the consultation over whether or not to exempt Deaneries from Employment Agency legislation designed to protect work-seekers from abuse by employers.

Not knowing what rotation jobs you’re going to be doing when you apply - being forced to stick or twist on jobs and threatened with action if you don’t - not knowing where you will be two weeks before your job starts. This is all behaviour the act is supposed to legislate against. You can read more here.

Deaneries first became involved with recruitment after the Calman reforms of the 1990s, but have never fully complied with the legislation governing Employment Agencies. Remedy and the BMA drew attention to this in 2008.

Then earlier this year the government proposed to introduce a formal exemption from the Act for Deaneries. It could only do this after adequate consultation.

Both Remedy and the BMA opposed this change.

But the government responded by saying that they intended to proceed with introducing the exemption for Deaneries regardless. The reasons that they gave for this were nothing to do with training - hardly surprising since the Darzi review suggested moving part of the ‘training’ responsibility away from Deaneries and into HIECs.

Instead they justified the exemption on "potential consequences" and "evidence", the details of which were not revealed. The consultation came to the conclusion that the only group who could be affected by the proposed changes to the law would be the Deaneries themselves; there was no consideration of any effects on the doctors themselves.

Our lawyers have concluded that this ‘consultation’ was not carried out properly, and we have asked the Secretary of State to withdraw his decision and to start the consultation process afresh. We are hoping to have an initial response from him by the 4th of January, and will then decide what action to take.

If this case goes to court then we will need to raise funds for it, and we hope our supporters will donate in the usual ways.