Friends and family of an experienced doctor who is bringing a whistleblowing claim against the Ministry of Defence have launched a crowd-funding appeal to help support his fight.
Dr Stephen Frost was dismissed by text and email while on a family holiday after he raised concerns about alleged discrepancies in the dispensing of strong painkillers at an army base.
According to Frost, in 2013 on 6 August he became aware of a dispensing discrepancy involving morphine sulphate tablets that occurred almost two weeks before he started working at the camp’s medical centre.
He said tablets six times the strength of those that should have been dispensed were involved. Frost expressed his concerns to members of the practice team and later to an internal investigating team and asked for the police to be informed.
Frost was engaged to work as a civilian doctor at Weeton barracks, near Blackpool, in July 2013 through a private healthcare recruitment group. His contract was due to last until December that year.
On 6 September, while on holiday, Frost’s posting was terminated by text and email and he was told not to return to work on the following Monday. He said no explanation was given.
At a preliminary hearing in January, the MoD tried to have Frost’s claim struck out, arguing that he could not officially be regarded as a “worker” for the ministry despite the fact that he had worked almost exclusively for the armed services for nearly 20 years through agencies.
The MoD also argued he could not be treated as a whistleblower because he had not originally stipulated this was a basis of his case – even though the word “whistleblower” appears on his initial claim form.
A judge ruled that Frost’s claim of unfair dismissal should be heard by a full employment tribunal in the summer. There was a further delay as Frost’s legal team worked to obtain what they believe are crucial documents and the full tribunal has been put back to January 2016. Frost was also told he faced paying huge legal costs if he loses.
Frost has suffered anxiety and depression since losing his post at an army base in the north of England in 2013 and has been unable to work. He has been granted permission by a judge to take the MoD to an employment tribunal but more than two years later he is still waiting for a full hearing.
A whistleblowing support organisation has said the case shows how hard it is for people like Frost to take on a huge body with vast resources such as the MoD.
Frost has long been a thorn in the side of military chiefs, having played a leading role in the campaign for a full inquest into the death of weapons expert David Kelly at the height of the Iraq dossier scandal.
Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home in 2003 shortly after being exposed as the source of a BBC claim that Tony Blair’s Labour government had “sexed up” a dossier that helped make the case for war in Iraq. The Hutton report concluded that Kelly, a member of a UN team sent to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, had committed suicide. Frost is among doctors who continue to doubt that conclusion.
In a statement, the friends and family members behind the fundraising campaign, said: “Dr Frost took his job as a civilian doctor working for the military very seriously; he found caring for sick and injured military personnel (both British and visiting foreign nationals) immensely rewarding and he made many friends at the various military bases at which he worked.”
They said the cost to Frost, both emotionally and financially, had been huge, adding: “The MoD has access to unlimited public funds with which to fight him.”
Ian Foxley, a retired army officer and chairman of Whistleblowers UK, said: “One of the major problems facing any whistleblower is the imbalance in resources between the individual and the organisation. Inevitably, David is relying on whatever he can lay his hands on while Goliath comes pre-armed and armoured with the rest of the Philistines lined up behind him for support.
“Crowd-funding is probably going to be the only way in which we can find the necessary funds to carry on fighting for justice for whistleblowers.”
The MoD said it could not comment on an ongoing legal case. The Guardian has seen correspondence from the MoD in which the former defence minister Anna Soubry said the case had been “fully investigated by the army primary healthcare service and appropriate action was taken”.
