Whistleblowing Awareness Week

James Daly Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mary Robinson]

My right hon. Friend has got right to the heart of this matter. If people do not know that they can come forward, or if they are in an organisation with a culture of fear and cover-up, they will not. Whistleblowing Awareness Week is about ensuring that people know what they can do, and about making organisations aware that they need to change. I am pushing for changes to legislation, as the Minister knows from our conversations —it is great to have him here today. My right hon. Friend is entirely right; it is about the culture in organisations.

The publication this week of Baroness Casey’s report into the Metropolitan police lays bare the tragic consequences of a culture of fear and cover-up, but if it were not this report, there would be another story in the headlines this week exposed by a whistleblower—or worse.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. The Casey review highlights a very specific example that shows why this debate is so important. Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, says he believes that he cannot sack officers who are either convicted of or under investigation for criminal offences. Why would whistleblowers come forward if there is no positive consequence to their actions?

[Mary Robinson]

That is at the heart of the problem. If people see that nothing is going to happen, why would they come forward? If they see that somebody is going to be bullied out of their job, why would they come forward? If they see that complaints or information about wrongdoing that they take to their senior leadership will not be acted on, why would they come forward? That is exactly at the heart of the problem.

We need to consider not just the impact of whistleblowers coming forward, making a complaint and letting people know what is going on, but also the impact of not doing that. We need to consider the impact when there is somebody in the police force who is known to indulge, or suspected of indulging, in bad or criminal behaviour, but nothing is done, nobody speaks out and the leadership does not act.

For this Whistleblowing Awareness Week, participants at a series of events in Westminster have heard from a wide range of whistleblowing experts from across the globe—legal, financial and human resources professionals, and those who have turned their lived, first-hand experience into action and passion for change. On Tuesday morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) chaired a roundtable on whistleblowing in the healthcare sector. I hope she will speak about that later. We heard from a range of experts, including the national guardian for freedom to speak up in the NHS, Dr Jayne Chidgey-Clark. That role came out of the recommendations of the 2015 “Freedom to Speak Up” report by Sir Robert Francis KC, which found that NHS culture did not always encourage staff to speak up or facilitate their doing so. That failure had a direct and negative impact on patients and staff.

Time and again, we have seen the impact of that failure in health trusts across the country: people have been impacted by scandals and lives have been lost in tragic circumstances. The national guardian is tasked with leading the change in NHS culture—look, it must change. Her most recent report includes many positive voices, which is good, but it also highlights that 58.3% of freedom to speak up guardians believe that barriers to speaking up include the concern that nothing will be done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) said. Alarmingly, 69% believe that a fear of retaliation or suffering as a result of speaking out is a deterrent. Clearly, there is more to be done to break down these barriers.

Patient safety depends on the success of a speaking-out culture, and that should sit alongside a learning culture where mistakes are not covered up for fear of blame. Doctors, nurses and other staff in healthcare settings have lives in their hands and they must feel comfortable, confident and able to report errors and mistakes.

It is often the whistleblowers themselves who give the most powerful testimony. Dr Chris Day is not only a whistleblower—he raised serious patient safety concerns while working as a junior doctor in an intensive care unit—but a change maker who exposed a gap in whistleblowing law that was subsequently reformed. After having blown the whistle on the understaffing that he witnessed, there was another battle on his hands: who can be held to account under existing legislation? As a junior doctor, his training and career were in the hands of Health Education England, who argued that as it did not directly employ Dr Day, the law did not apply to it. He challenged that, and the court found that junior doctors did come under the extended definition of worker. It also found that a worker could have two employers under whistleblowing legislation. Although the issues that he raised as a whistleblower have not been resolved, Dr Day’s actions have resulted in a change to the law.

During our roundtable on Wednesday this week, exploring the new approach to whistleblowing, we heard from Jonathan Taylor, who exposed bribery in the oil and gas industry. Although his disclosures resulted in SBM, a Dutch multinational, paying out more than $800 million in fines and related payments, his whistleblowing also put a stop to an economic crime that had run to hundreds of millions. A statistic that is shared many times in Parliament, including by me, is that 43% of economic crime is detected and exposed through whistleblowers. The Minister has previously said he believes that about 100% of economic crime detection could be attributed to whistleblowing. So, if we want to know where economic crime is being committed, we need to encourage whistle- blowers and others to speak out.

However, speaking up came at a huge personal and professional cost to Mr Taylor. Not only did he spend a year under house arrest in Croatia, but he lost his career. We cannot overestimate the mental and emotional toll that whistleblowing has on people, and he is not alone in his experience. It is no wonder, after having heard the detriment suffered by so many whistleblowers, that people are averse to speaking up.

We also had the pleasure of welcoming Zelda Perkins, who, in breaking her non-disclosure agreement, shone a light on sexual abuse in Hollywood and helped to expose a top film executive who would later be prosecuted for sexual assault and rape. She went on to co-found the Can’t Buy My Silence campaign, which seeks to make NDAs unenforceable except in the case of preventing the sharing of confidential business information and trade secrets, which was their original purpose. The campaign’s efforts contributed to the Department for Education’s introduction of its pledge to end the use of NDAs in universities. That is progress, but we need to go further.

NDAs are often used not just to settle employment disputes, but to silence people. Fraud, corruption, incompetence, environmental damage, abuse, avoidable deaths and cover-ups are silently buried through the use of those agreements. Instead, I would like to bury the use of NDAs for that purpose. We have a situation where some people want to speak up but are bound by such legal agreements, and we have others who could speak but fear reprisals and repercussions. Either way, wrongdoing goes unchallenged. So now what?

Baroness Casey’s Met police review highlights systemic and chronic problems that can arise across any organisation where there is a culture of fear and cover-up. We have a police force riddled with misogyny, racism and homophobia, with inadequate management structures, a lack of leadership and a culture of fear. She describes an organisation where:

“The culture of not speaking up has become so ingrained that even when senior officers actively seek candid views, there is a reluctance to speak up.”

Whistleblowers must have trust and confidence in internal processes, but whistleblowers often come from outside these organisations. I remain concerned that our lack of an inclusive and effective whistleblowing law will continue to hinder progress.

Colleagues may know that last year I brought forward a private Member’s Bill that would reform our whistleblowing legislation. Although it fell because of lack of time, I remain determined to see changes to how we support, encourage and protect the brave people who are prepared to speak out and report wrongdoing. The Bill proposed to create an office of the whistleblower, which would be responsible for setting, monitoring and enforcing standards in the management of whistleblowing cases. The office would provide advice services and a clear avenue for disclosure, and it would direct investigations and handle redress for whistleblowers. Importantly, it would support anyone blowing the whistle.

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[James Daly]

Will my hon. Friend comment on this matter in respect of how the legislation is not working? Originally, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 did not apply to police officers. However, whistleblowing provisions and protections came in through the Police Reform Act 2002, and they received whistleblowing protection from 1 April 2004. We have legislation in place that states police officers have whistleblowing protection. The situation has actually got worse, and that clearly shows that the legislation needs reforming immediately.

[Mary Robinson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that; we have seen it across various police forces. We are now further examining how the cultures are working, and that need for reform is there. It shows that the best intentions to bring in reforms do not always lead to the protections that we want people to have.

I welcome the review. However, as part of it, I ask the Minister and the Department to look at where this policy area falls and which Department should take responsibility. We have spoken already today about the NHS, policing, and different sectors and organisations. Although I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) is now the Minister responsible, given his extensive experience and his support for whistleblowers and legislative change, I hope that he and the Government will look at the issue in a different way. The existing law has constraints because it relates to only employment and business. Perhaps now is the time to look at the issue more holistically, because it crosses so many Departments.

As I have already set out, the issue cuts across industries and sectors. Importantly, anyone—not just an employee—can be a whistleblower. However, our laws have told us to look at it from only an employer-employee perspective. When it was introduced 25 years ago, the Public Interest Disclosure Act was heralded as world leading, with protections for whistleblowers at employment tribunals. However, as I just said to my hon. Friend, just 4% of employment cases are successful at tribunal. That further brings PIDA’s efficacy into question.

We are all familiar with gov.uk; it is where we get all our information. The gov.uk page on whistleblowing says:

“You’re a whistleblower if you’re a worker and you report certain types of wrongdoing. This will usually be something you’ve seen at work - though not always.

The wrongdoing you disclose must be in the public interest. This means it must affect others, for example the general public.”

By my interpretation, that means the Government consider only a limited part of the population to be whistleblowers.

I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Minister attended the launch of Whistleblowing Awareness Week on Monday. I am grateful for his comments and support. He has wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge in this area; I like to think that is partly due to his time as co-chair of the APPG on whistleblowing. I was interested to hear his comments on his business experience and the importance of customer complaints. However, if a customer witnesses wrongdoing in a business or organisation, they are not covered by PIDA. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash pointed out, a family member of an employee is not covered. Volunteers and contractors are not covered either.

Despite concerns expressed by some, this is not about stripping back employment rights. It is about extending those rights and protections to the wider population. It is about protecting victims of crime who may have evidence of wrongdoing within the police, protecting lawyers and accountants who have uncovered evidence of fraud, and protecting those associated with economic crime who may wish to inform law enforcement. Whistleblowing is more than an employment issue. It is a business issue, a safety issue and an issue for Government. I question whether its future belongs in employment law at all.

During Whistleblowing Awareness Week, we heard from some of those who have spoken out about their journey to expose the truth. Our discussions highlighted the urgent need for the Government to introduce new legislation that defines whistleblowing and puts in place meaningful measures to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. It is interesting that our existing legislation does not mention the word “whistleblower” at all.

For those in doubt about the urgency for reform, I hope I have made some of the moral arguments. Let us get to finance. Whistleblowers are acknowledged as the single most effective means of addressing fraud and corruption—not accountants, lawyers or anybody else, but whistleblowers. It is estimated that fraud and corruption costs the UK over £190 billion a year. To put that into perspective, that is more than the entire NHS budget. We cannot continue in this way.

The proposals backed by the APPG on whistleblowing and in the Bill that I brought forward last year will improve the rights of workers, give new rights to everyone, save lives and put an end to the costly and wasteful practice of cover up.

Whistleblowing Awareness Week was brought forward and launched to introduce and mobilise public opinion, influence legislators, celebrate those courageous whistle- blowers who have already given so much to society and seek to bring about a better world in which ordinary people will no longer have to have extraordinary courage to speak up. It is my hope that the conversations we have had this week will continue to move the dial towards legislative change, and I am grateful to have the time in this debate to be able to raise awareness of Whistleblowing Awareness Week.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I have known my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for a long time; there are good MPs and there are great MPs, and she is a great MP. I want to amplify the time, effort and courage that she has shown on this particular issue, because she has done some very important work and continues to do it to this day.

I am a member of the Home Affairs and Justice Committees, so I will talk about whistleblowing in that context. It is wonderful to see the Minister in his place. Before he took up his ministerial position, he did a lot of work in this House on economic crime, and he knows the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle. The Casey review has highlighted and amplified the importance of whistleblowers. Baroness Casey appeared before the Home Affairs Committee yesterday and outlined a whole set of horrific allegations and incidents that have happened in the Metropolitan police over a number of years. It is simply not good enough to say, “Yes, those were horrific. What can we do about that?” In my view, one of the reasons why the system was unable to deal with some of the problems we have seen in police forces throughout the country is that although there are some protections—I read out the Police Reform Act 2002 earlier—they are not good enough to encourage and give people the protection to speak out about the abominable acts they see around them.

In the Metropolitan police, officers were witnessing criminal behaviour, but they did not have the protection to be able to speak out about it. It is quite extraordinary when we think about it. This week—I think this was a recent statement, but this must put it into perspective— Sir Mark Rowley said:

“So I’ve got officers who we determined shouldn’t be police officers and yet I have to keep them. It sounds bizarre—I’m the commissioner, yet I can’t decide who my own workforce is.”

A witness to a criminal act might want to be a whistleblower, but why would they threaten their career progression or risk the breakdown of relationships with work colleagues if they knew there would be no consequences?

The situation is worse than that. In Greater Manchester police, there was a lady named Maggie Oliver, who I think all of us in the room know; my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle has done a lot of work with her. Maggie was involved for 15 years in the investigation of serious sexual offending in the Greater Manchester area. She had to resign from her job for stating—I will just say it as it is—that rapes were being carried out on teenagers in the Rochdale area and the police were refusing to do anything about it. Within the internal procedures and processes of the police force, she could not even have that matter dealt with. This is a matter of fact; this is not made up.

Maggie had to take the brave decision to leave a career that she loved after 15 years to state the obvious and honest facts of what was happening within the police. What has happened? She has been incredibly brave —she has set up the Maggie Oliver Foundation—but Greater Manchester police continued to say, “No, that’s not true”—they covered the whole thing up and made it incredibly difficult.

Both myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle have had various officers from Greater Manchester police come to us stating the most appalling things, but they are concerned that there is no protection because, even though there is some in PIDA and the other legislation, the actual culture in these organisations means that they will be hounded out of their jobs. In 2019, in Greater Manchester police, it was quite obvious to a number of us that the new, £27 million integrated operational policing system computer was falling apart. No police officer publicly criticised that. No police officer was able to go out and say, “This is a disaster.” But they came to various elected representatives and the local paper, the Manchester Evening News, to say that, as a result of what was happening, police and public safety was at risk. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police at the time said it was not true, and that everything was fine—but it was true.

Even with fundamental issues of public safety, when people are being brutalised in the most appalling manner, people in our police forces are not confident that they will have sufficient protections to enable them to protect the public. I cannot find the words to describe how appalling that is. There are things in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 that are still applicable. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle said that the definition meant that the relevant person had to be an employee. The qualifying disclosures for which someone is covered and given protection are:

“a criminal offence has been committed…a person has failed, is failing or is likely to fail to comply with any legal obligation…a miscarriage of justice has occurred…the health or safety of any individual has been, is being or is likely to be endangered…the environment has been, is being or is likely to be damaged”.

That is a very broad description of what is in the public interest.

There are warm words on the statute book, but they do not work. They should apply outside of just employees, but even if we look at them on their own terms, they do not work. The evidence says they do not work. I suspect the Minister agrees with me, and feels that we have to find a different way to deal with such matters. We asked Baroness Casey how long it would be until we could assess the reform needed at the Metropolitan police; she answered that it would be at least two years. Who protects the public in those two years? We have had disasters in the Met for years and years. Whistleblowers are the protection for the public, and they will not come forward because the system does not protect them.

I argue strongly that we are in a very bad situation. I was going to say that we should treasure whistleblowers— I think that is the correct word. I cannot think of a circumstance where a whistleblower would take that brave step if it was not in the public interest and for a public good. We need a different way, and the private Member’s Bill put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle offers one. I say bluntly to the Minister that if we do not have those protections, we will have another report from another eminent person about another police force saying that appalling things have been happening, but officers have not had sufficient protection from internal management and procedures to come forward and do what is right. That needs to be changed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I support every single word she said.

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[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms McDonagh, and to speak on this important issue during the first Whistleblowing Awareness Week, which was launched in Parliament on Monday. I am pleased to add my voice to calls for organisations to change and for people to have the courage to come forward. There should be no fear or cover-up in organisations, and we need to look at how we change the law to enable and support that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) on securing the debate. There is no greater champion in Parliament for the protection of whistle- blowers. We now also have colleagues in the Lords, whom we have mentioned today, who are taking forward the call for stronger legislation. I support the hon. Lady’s argument that UK standards should also be global standards. I thank WhistleblowersUK for its relentless advocacy in this space. I encourage everyone to be involved as much as possible in any remaining programmes and activity this week. I am sure that Whistleblowing Awareness Week will be an annual event; it is vital to keep a focus on the issue and keep Parliament’s mind focused on not just legislation, but perhaps how well that new legislation could be working. It was a pleasure to speak alongside WhistleblowersUK chief executive Georgina Halford-Hall at the start of the week, with the Minister also present at the event.

Most importantly, as I am sure the whole House and all who are present will agree, those in most need of our thanks this week are the whistleblowers themselves, for the extraordinary risks they take and the great sacrifices they make to uphold justice, transparency and accountability, in this country and internationally. It is clear from the contributions today that that sentiment is felt across the House.

The hon. Member for Cheadle laid out some of the new insights that were shared at roundtables this week and spoke about the misuse of non-disclosure agreements. There were also important contributions from the hon. Members for Bury North (James Daly) and for Erewash (Maggie Throup) and the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who has her very own constituency connection to the passing of PIDA 25 years ago. The right hon. Lady called for clarity and, perhaps, more urgency on the Government’s next steps. I acknowledge and support the arguments made by colleagues and the connection with the harrowing Casey report that is out this week and is very much a part of all our lives, particularly those of us who are London Members of Parliament. I also thank the hon. Member for Erewash for chairing roundtables at some of the events this week. SNP colleagues have also been supportive, not just today but during the ongoing debates on the issue. 

The importance of whistleblowing in upholding transparency in opaque institutions and exposing law-breaking cannot be underestimated, whether that is regarding sexual abuse scandals, Grenfell, economic and financial crime, financial institutions, the police, Government Departments, sporting organisations, religious institutions or large multinational corporations—the list goes on. In every single one, at some point, whistleblowers have been responsible, sometimes solely, for drawing attention to wrongdoing and for bringing justice.

I reiterate the comments of the hon. Member for Cheadle on economic crime, an area in which I worked closely with the Minister, on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. The National Crime Agency estimates that fraud costs the UK economy £190 billion each year, including £40 billion to the public sector. Between 43% and 47% of serious economic crimes are exposed by whistleblowers. The numbers show the huge scale of the issue, the huge role that whistleblowers play in exposing economic crime, and the impact they could have on our economy, if they were granted more protection under legislation.

One example is the Danske Bank money laundering scheme, where criminals took advantage of UK limited liability partnerships. It was a whistleblower that exposed the $230 billion economic crime operation, halting a stream of Russian money laundering.

That is why better protection of whistleblowers is so important—because, in so many cases, they are the first line of defence. They deserve greater legal protections than they currently receive. Multiple Ministers have promised us that change is coming, but that is not a message currently commanding the greatest of confidence. The Minister is likely to say that he is reviewing the whistleblowing framework and moving forward as soon as possible. That is an area on which we have common ground.

[James Daly]

The hon. Member is making some valid points. As parliamentarians, we could come up with new legislation that could give new protections. The problem is that if certain organisations have toxic cultures, no matter what the legal protections are, people are intimidated and will not come forward. That is where the issue is, no matter the legislation. The Met is one example, but there are others. I wonder what she feels we can do on institutionalised attitudes.

[Seema Malhotra]

The hon. Member raises a significant point, which I alluded to in my comments on the speech by the hon. Member for Cheadle. This issue needs serious leadership, commitment and accountability for change. The debates we have had in Parliament on the Casey report are some examples. Transparency and accountability at the very top really do matter.

When the Government bring forward measures, this is an area on which we will have common ground. The Minister knows we will support the Government on those measures, but I hope he will also understand that we want to see measures brought forward more quickly than is apparent at the moment—perhaps he will speak to that that in his remarks—because whistleblowers are being let down by inaction.

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which was referred to in the debate, was initially celebrated as groundbreaking. Now, only 4% of people who bring claims under its provisions succeed. There are arguments that it effectively discourages whistleblowing, and there are questions now about its scope. Independent data shows an overall decline in whistleblower reports across the public and private sectors, and reports of harassment against those threatening to whistleblow are increasing. That is utterly unacceptable.

Last year the International Bar Association, as has been mentioned, conducted the first review of its kind to assess countries with whistleblower legislation against compliance with international best practice. The UK ranked only 12th out of 16 countries. As the APPG for whistleblowing, chaired by the hon. Member for Cheadle, highlights in its recent report,

“Whistleblowers in general remain the subject of suspicion and scepticism and while organisations and official bodies sing the merits of whistleblowing and parade policies and procedures the lived experience of whistleblowers remains poor.”

It is clear that much more needs to be done if we are to adequately protect whistleblowers and ensure greater transparency in our public and private institutions. That is why during the passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill through the Commons, both in Committee and on Report, the Labour party supported the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Cheadle, which would have established an office of the whistleblower. That happens in the United States, so why not here?

The office would protect whistleblowers from detriment, ensure that disclosures by whistleblowers are investigated, and escalate information and evidence of wrongdoing outside of its remit to another appropriate authority. The objectives of the office would be to encourage and support people to make whistleblowing reports, to provide an independent, confidential and safe environment for making and receiving whistleblowing information, to provide information and advice on whistleblowing, and to act on evidence of detriment. As the hon. Member for Cheadle raised on Report, there is evidence that an office of whistleblowers incentivises and increases disclosures.

In 2020 the International Bar Association tested countries with whistleblowing legislation against a list of 20 best practices. The UK met just five. Meanwhile, the United States, which has an Office of the Whistleblower, met 16, and that office received 12,300 disclosures in 2022, nearly double the number of 2020.

The Labour Front Bench will join cross-party calls in Parliament to increase protections for whistleblowers at a time when it could not be needed more. I hope the Government will say more today about the steps that they will take. I note that during the passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill through the Commons the Security Minister said he agreed with the need for an office of the whistleblower. His exact words were:

“what the country needs is an office for whistleblowers, and what we need to do is ensure that we have the updates to the legislation that she”—

the hon. Member for Cheadle—

“so correctly highlighted.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2023; Vol. 726, c. 1094.]

So I ask the Minister: what progress have the Government made in carrying out that latest commitment?

I seek assurances from the Minister that action is on its way—not just a commitment to having a review, but genuine action. I look forward to his response and hope that the Government will get a grip of what is an important issue and make sure that there is support for whistleblowers and for the sacrifices that they make every day to uphold justice and transparency.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for all the work that she does on the all-party group. As she rightly points out, I was formerly the co-chair with her on that group. We can sometimes move from a Back-Bench position where we speak about an issue that we feel strongly about, and then we can be put in a ministerial position that covers that brief, but I can reassure Members that I am as ambitious as ever to make sure we get the right reforms for whistleblowing.

My hon. Friend had a reception, which I was pleased to attend. She has had a number of events this week, and I pay tribute to her for her work in drawing attention to the importance of whistleblowers for our society. Whistleblowers are clearly the eyes and ears of our organisations, in terms of potential wrongdoing. As my hon. Friend knows, I have had a number of experiences with constituents. Ian Foxley blew the whistle on GPT Special Project Management, and did an incredible job. Paul Moore blew the whistle at HBOS prior to its financial distress and collapse. Sally Masterton was the whistleblower of the HBOS Reading scandal, which took five years to reach court, where she was vindicated for her statements.

The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) referenced Danske Bank, and the £234 billion of money laundering. She is right to talk about some of the UK corporate vehicles used for that. We are working together on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill to tighten up the opportunities people have to use those vehicles. One of the biggest scandals in that case was Danske Bank allowing that to happen on its watch. Howard Wilkinson was the whistleblower; the £234 billion of Russian money washing through Danske Bank in Estonia resulted in a $2 billion fine from the US authorities.

According to the statistics, 43% of economic crimes are highlighted by whistleblowers, but in my experience, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle stated, it is much higher than that. Every case of economic crime I have dealt with has come from a whistleblower, and I pay tribute to them. It is not just financial crime; my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) highlighted issues with the Met police, which might have been brought to light much sooner if people had felt more confident about the whistleblowing framework. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) talked about Winterbourne View; that also might have come to light much sooner, with people being brought to justice much sooner, if people had more confidence.

It is right that we seek to more effectively protect and compensate whistleblowers for doing the right thing. It is excellent that we have so many top-quality parliamentarians in this debate who will throw their weight behind the campaign for change. I am keen to do so too.

Our whistleblowing framework was introduced through the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. It was intended to build openness and trust in workplaces by ensuring that workers can hold their employers to account, and are then treated fairly. It provides a route for workers to make disclosures of wrongdoing, including criminal offences, the endangerment of health and safety, causing damage to the environment, a miscarriage of justice, or a breach of any legal obligation. Disclosures usually need to be made to the employer, a lawyer or a prescribed person. Workers who believe they have been dismissed or otherwise detrimentally treated for making a protected disclosure can make a claim to an employment tribunal, which can award unlimited compensation.

Workers are often the first people to witness any type of wrongdoing within an organisation. Information that workers may uncover could prevent wrongdoing that may damage an organisation’s reputation or performance, and, in extreme circumstances, even save people from harm or death. In relation to whistleblowing protections, the standard employment law definition of a worker has been extended, and includes a wide range of employment relationships, such as agency workers; individuals under -taking work experience; self-employed doctors, dentists and pharmacists in the NHS; job applicants in the health sector; police officers; and student nurses and student midwives.

I fully understand that there are people who are not protected by the current legislation. Indeed, Ian Foxley was not covered by the legislation, and suffered hundreds of thousands of pounds of detriment for blowing the whistle. He spent 11 years without any employment, and he was a well-paid contractor prior to that time.

[James Daly]

What does the Minister mean by protected?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Protected from detriment. In Ian Foxley’s case, he feared for his life. It could be detriment in terms of loss of employment. There are a number of different detriments. Both protection and compensation should be fairly made.

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[James Daly]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) said, there is a 4% success rate at employment tribunal. Those protections do not seem to be translating into ones that are enforceable in an employment tribunal, which is the problem.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will come on to what we are trying to do to make the legislation more effective. Do I think the legislation is where it needs to be today? No, I do not. That is the case for the changes we need to make. We need to look at all the different evidential points to ensure we move to the right place. Ian Foxley was a contractor, which is why he did not have the opportunity to get compensation in his case.

The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) made a good point about volunteers. They may also be the eyes and ears we need. He made the alarming point that people who blow the whistle could lose everything, which all of us should take into account. People who clearly do not feel they will be properly protected or properly compensated should feel more assured that they will.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) pointed to the fact that the legislation was implemented 25 years ago by one of her predecessors. To give some reassurance, since the introduction of that legislation, the Government have continued to strengthen some of its provisions using non-legislative and legislative measures. We have produced guidance for whistleblowers and prescribed persons, as well as guidance and a code of practice for employers. We have produced guidance on how whistleblowers can make disclosures.

In 2017, we introduced a new requirement for most prescribed persons to produce an annual report on whistleblowing disclosures made to them. That duty is a direct response to concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding how disclosures were being handled. Most prescribed persons are now required to report on the number of disclosures, state whether they decided to take further action and give a summary of any action taken. We have also expanded the list of prescribed persons—the individuals and bodies to whom a worker can blow the whistle. In December 2022, I took forward some legislation to add six new bodies and all Members of the Scottish Parliament to the prescribed persons order. We continue to welcome proposals for appropriate additions to that order.