Ousted minister Kate Beecroft said she was told to resign on health grounds - or be sacked.

Mrs Beecroft said she is still upset at how she was forced out of the Department of Health and Social Care.

She told iomtoday that Chief Minister Howard Quayle had visited her in hospital with a bunch of flowers from CoMin.

’He said he was concerned about my health and said he knew how much that department can take it out you. I didn’t think it an appropriate thing to say,’ she said.

Mrs Beecroft said at that point she thought the Chief Minister was considering a reshuffle. She had already said that she would not accept a move to another department.

When she came out of hospital, she arranged to meet Mr Quayle in his office.

She said: ’Straight away he said "I have to tell you that other members are not happy with you and I would like you to resign on health grounds. If you don’t resign I have no choice but to sack you." That was a bolt out of he blue.’

Mrs Beecroft said: ’It was almost like a kangaroo court. Decisions were made without regard to what was said. That really does hurt.

’If I had made bad decisions, that’s fine.

’But you tell me what I did that was so terrible I had to be sacked?’

In the end, she attended a department meeting the following day and announced she would be resigning.

’I’m still upset about it. That department is so important to me. That’s why I was in CoMin,’ she said.

Mrs Beecroft claimed the DHSC’s political members had not said anything to her about being unhappy. ’We seemed to be working together as a team,’ she said.

Tynwald will be asked next week to support £9.5m of extra funding for the cash-strapped DHSC.

But the former minister insists that ’things were beginning to turn round’.

She said if it hadn’t have been for the overspend on locums and agency staff, the department would have been almost on budget - and a move to ensure most consultants are employed as permanent staff will ’in itself be a huge achievement’.

Mrs Beecroft confirmed that controversial changes to prescriptions - including charging pensioners under 75 - will not now go ahead. ’The consultations showed people didn’t want that. It was a genuine consultation,’ she said.

She revealed that another option now being considered is free prescriptions for all, just as is the position in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Such a move would mean that certain drugs, including self-care medications like paracetamol, would no longer be prescribed.

No policy decision has been made and this will be one of the first decisions of the new minister, David Ashford.

LibVan leader Mrs Beecroft said she is still very interested in all things to do with social care and will return to being a backbencher, a role that she said she enjoyed.