The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has declined an appeal by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to overrule claims of discrimination from a former soldier and single mother.
Tilern DeBique, a former Foreign and Commonwealth soldier from St Vincent and the Grenadines, felt she was forced out of the Army in 2007 after they took an unsympathetic and sexist view towards her rights as a mother as well as her nationality.
A soldier with the 10th Signal Regiment since 2001, Ms DeBique gave birth to her first child in August 2005. As part of her service, the Army housed the new family in a two-bedroom house at Chelsea Barracks and made working arrangements around her new found parenting duties.
But, in 2006, Ms DeBique’s child fell ill and she missed training for "a reason relating to childcare difficulties". She was warned over the severity of her actions and disciplined.
Several more incidents, including the Army’s unwillingness to facilitate foreign relatives’ attempts to aid Ms DiBique’s childcare problems, eventually forced the mother to resign in April 2007.
Claiming she was on "a path to dismissal", Ms DeBique’s resignation was met with harsh words by commanding officers, with one telling her that: "The British Army was a war-fighting machine, not suitable for a single mother who could not sort out her childcare arrangements."
In 2008, an employment tribunal ruled that the Army had discriminated against the soldier and breached the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976.
According to judges, the Army had "failed to make any appropriate arrangements" for Ms DeBique, nor had it tried to relax "the usual immigration" rule or contacted the UK Border Agency on behalf of their recruit.
An appeal by the MoD on several grounds, including the court’s ability to enforce racial discrimination accusations, was quashed this week. The EAT maintained that there were no errors of law in the original ruling and compensation could now be sought by the soldier.
