Health Minister David Ashford says a full point-by-point rebuttal will be issued for all allegations made by Dr Rachel Glover.

In testimony to a Tynwald committee, Dr Glover, who was instrumental in setting up the island’s Covid testing lab, accused the Department of Health and Social Care of intellectual property theft and setting out to discredit her.

On Monday, Chief Minister Howard Quayle refused to comment on the claims.

Mr Ashford said Dr Glover’s allegations are ’totally and utterly refuted’ and his department has not seen the evidence to back up her claims.

Dr Glover, senior scientific officer for Taxa Genomic Ltd, resigned from her position in the testing lab in October.

She told the committee she had done so as she had felt ’exploited’, working 100-hour weeks without recognition of what she was doing and had not been allowed any input on government testing policy.

Dr Glover claimed she was then ’hung out to dry’ by an anonymous letter supposedly written by a DHSC staff member and read out by the Health Minister at a Covid briefing.

She said she called in police after catching staff copying her company’s software - only for the department to threaten to prosecute her, claiming she had deliberately removed the software to halt Covid testing in the Isle of Man.

Mr Ashford insisted the lab did not use Dr Glover’s code after she left the department and a timeline of events will be produced to disprove her claims.

He said: ’There will be a point-by-point statement formally issued in the coming days.

’I have granted the relevant officers who need to be involved in the timeline a week off over Easter. They have been doing in some cases 17-hour days, seven days a week without a break for 12 months. I was not willing to cancel their leave over this.

’It will be done before the end of this week when they are back from leave.’