Office of the Whistleblower Bill [HL]

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her persistence in pursuing this important issue and for introducing this Bill. Offering guidance, protection and support for whistleblowers, with a central body that can co-ordinate across sectors—from care homes, to hospitals, to furlough fraud, to financial firms—is clearly an important aim.

The Employment Rights Act 1996 and the amendments in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 are way out of date and leave significant lacunae. For example, they do not even cover entire groups, such as trustees, non-executive directors or the self-employed. There is no joined-up approach to protecting whistleblowers, and the Bill proposes establishing an umbrella body to co-ordinate across sectors, which clearly seems to be needed. Working internally, the whistleblowers are best placed to uncover wrongdoing, yet face monumental hurdles when they try to report issues that are clearly in the public interest.

The noble Baroness’s Bill proposes this new body to, for example, create a panel of accredited legal firms or advisers and a fund to support whistleblowers, as well as to ensure proper financial redress for those who are victimised for trying to do the right thing.

Whistleblowing is too often viewed negatively—some kind of betrayal of your employer, who is a potential wrongdoer—unlike compliance functions, which are accepted as necessary to protect the public. Unfortunately, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, explained, the reforms in 2017 require bodies such as the Bank of England or the General Medical Council merely to produce a report on whistleblowers. That is clearly not sufficient to protect the whistleblowers themselves, who are battling through the courts to try to protect their own employment position, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, described.

The USA has much stronger protections, and we are falling behind internationally. It recognises that whistleblowers are often important parts of stopping wrongdoing, but our regulators do not seem to be equipped, or take too long, to react to whistleblowing. They end up being years behind the wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the offences continue and the whistleblower is still fighting through the courts for redress.

Who might fund this office? That is an important issue, but I would be grateful if my noble friend could indicate any support for the Bill.