Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

58ZA: Clause 147, page 127, line 2, at end insert—
“( ) In section 43K(1) (extension of meaning of “worker” etc. for Part 1VA), after paragraph (d) insert—
“(e) is or has been a job applicant.””

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 59 and Amendments 59A to 59F. All these amendments seek to provide additional protections for whistleblowers, and they follow on from discussion of these issues in Committee.

I shall take Amendment 59 first. It arises from the Government’s response to the amendment that I moved in Committee seeking to place a code of conduct for whistleblowing on a statutory basis. I shall not repeat all the arguments that were made in Committee, but a statutory code of conduct would send out to all organisations a powerful signal about the importance that Parliament attaches to providing adequate protection for whistleblowers, and it would help to drive cultural change within organisations to encourage whistleblowing.

In Committee, the Minister engaged with this very constructively—I repeat my thanks to her for doing so—and she did not reject the case for this. However, she felt that the voluntary code that the Government are developing would offer sufficient protection. She said:

“We will keep this under review, and if this is not bringing about the change that we expect to see, we will consider introducing a statutory code of practice”.—[Official Report, 26/1/15; col. GC 9.]

All Amendment 59 seeks to do is to ensure that such a review does indeed take place.

The government measures in the Bill to improve protections for whistleblowers are welcome, and I congratulate the Minister and all her colleagues on them, but I am sorry that I could not convince her in Committee to go further. Loopholes remain in these protections and, where loopholes exist, all history suggests that the powerful take advantage of them.

The action that the Government are now taking on whistleblowing is being driven by terrible recent scandals, which might have been prevented had better protection for whistleblowers been in place. This is a clear lesson from, for example, the Francis reports into the NHS and the recent inquiry into the Rotherham abuse scandal. Despite this, the facts of Westminster life are such that scandals fade as time passes. Unfortunately, Ministers and officials come and go, collective memory is increasingly eroded and there are always new pressures on new Ministers and officials. In these circumstances, we should not wait for another scandal to be revealed to introduce any necessary new whistleblowing protections.

Continuing scrutiny is required to ensure that whistleblowers receive all the protections that they need to prevent such scandals recurring. This amendment seeks to set up a regular review process to do just that. It is not onerous. It simply puts in place a system to guarantee delivery of what the Minister has said that the Government will do. I accept, of course, the Minister’s good faith in offering reassurances, but because of the circumstances that I have just described future delivery of those cannot necessarily be guaranteed and relied upon. In these circumstances, I hope that the Minister will accept this simple amendment.

Amendment 58ZA provides improved protections for whistleblowers who are job applicants. Unlike other areas of discrimination law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 does not currently consider job applicants to be workers and so they do not receive protection for whistleblowing. Your Lordships’ House discussed the case for tackling this anomaly in Committee. Again, I do not intend to repeat all the arguments, but the Minister said then that, while she appreciated the amendment that I moved, she rejected it because,

“there is work to be done to get this right and it will take time, beyond this Parliament, to reach a suitable solution. It would not be right to add this half-cooked work to a Bill designed primarily to help small business and not to introduce new burdens for employers”.—[Official Report, 25/1/15; col. GC 10.]

The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, expressed from the Government Back Benches her concern that this important Bill should not be held up. I am delighted that, between Committee and today, the Government have reconsidered the situation and have decided that after all there is time to introduce new protections for whistleblowing job applicants. I congratulate them. I particularly congratulate the Minster on their change of heart and I thank her for her characteristic courtesy in alerting me of it in advance.

But—I am afraid that there is a “but”—the Government’s amendment covers only the NHS. There is no logical reason why it should be so restricted. That is why Amendment 58ZA is still necessary. It extends the Government’s proposals for protecting whistleblowing job applicants in the NHS to all workers. The risk of the sort of informal blacklisting that government Amendment 58A tackles occurs far more widely than just in the NHS. For example, in the construction industry there have been notorious instances of workers failing to find new work after raising concerns about safety. No Government have adopted such a piecemeal approach to other legislation that outlaws discrimination. Actionable offences of sex and race discrimination are not restricted to the NHS, so why should discrimination against whistleblowers be so restricted?

This is a short, simple amendment. It will prevent what I assume is the unintended consequence of the government amendment in creating what would be a two-tier system of protection, with NHS workers, important and valuable as they are, privileged to enjoy protections not extended to all other workers who seek to protect the public by whistleblowing. Such a two-tier system would be unfair to individual workers and would hinder the development of the culture of transparency, which I think all your Lordships would agree has been shown in scandal after scandal to be so critical in protecting the public. I hope that the Minister will finish today the work which her own amendments have started and accept Amendment 58ZA.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am sorry if I caused confusion. What I was saying is that this is a relatively late stage in this Bill and that what we have done is taken steps to bring forward some of the actions that follow from the Francis review. Noble Lords opposite have been extremely helpful about supporting that and supporting it instantly. I am very glad to have been able to end that confusion.

[Lord Wills]

I am very sorry; the Minister is gracious in giving way yet again. Before she leaves this amendment, will she clarify the points that she is making about process? Just to be clear—she can indicate with a nod, if she wishes, rather than getting to her feet yet again—does she accept that whistleblowing can be essential in protecting the public interest and the public in other sectors apart from the NHS, such as the financial sector, the police, and adult and child social care? That is my first question to the Minister.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wills. Of course whistleblowing can play a vital part in all areas. I said that right at the beginning. As far as this Bill is concerned, we are taking specific steps in relation to the NHS. Perhaps if I could make a little bit more progress, I could explain some of the other things that we are also doing.

[Lord Wills]

I wonder whether I could just push the Minister a little bit further on this process. She says that the Government do not have the evidence to take the measures for other sectors that they are currently taking in relation to the NHS. She said that the Francis report has produced the evidence that the Government feel they need to proceed. I accept that. It is a perfectly reasonable approach. However, if she accepts that whistleblowing is so important in all these other vital sectors and that there is a loophole in protections that the Government are seeking to plug—clearly they accept that there are loopholes because they are seeking to plug them in relation to the NHS—why will the Minister not commit now to launching an inquiry to see whether such evidence exists? The Government did it with Mid Staffs; they have done it with other scandals; they know that there is a problem here; they know that it is important to tackle this problem. Why do the Government not commit now to collecting the evidence to see how best they can move to plug these loopholes?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am not sure that we are going to agree this evening on extending to other areas the provisions that we are very happy to include for the NHS. I have made clear that we need an evidence base and that we are doing things in other areas. The things that we are doing in other areas, to which I hope to move on, will also help to show what is happening on the ground. The debates that we have had in the House, which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, has encouraged us to have, will also change the culture in relation to whistleblowers. The very fact of the disastrous circumstances in the NHS has shown how important whistleblowers are, which is why we are making the changes that we are in relation to recruitment in the NHS.

If I may make progress, I will turn to the noble Lord’s Amendment 59, which seeks to introduce a rolling statutory review of the whistleblowing legislation. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that it was only last June that the Government reported the findings from their call for evidence that reviewed that legislation. The Government have also carried out an extensive employment law review during this Parliament. Looking to future review processes, we see that post-legislative scrutiny is applied to all changes to legislation five years after the measures have come into force. We have an impressive rolling programme. The changes that we introduced to the whistleblowing framework in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, and the changes in this Bill, will be included in the rolling process. Considering the steps that we have taken to review employment legislation, and specifically whistleblowing legislation, I do not believe that it is necessary to introduce another review next year.

I turn now to Amendments 59A to 59F, which seek to create a national whistleblowing review officer. The Government fully understand the intention behind the proposed new clauses, which is to ensure that concerns raised by whistleblowers are acted upon. We know from research carried out by the University of Greenwich and Public Concern at Work that 75% of whistleblowers believe not enough is done about the concerns that they report. We want employers or the relevant authority to take action. That is why we are introducing the important measures in this Bill to require prescribed persons to report on how they handle whistleblowing concerns. That will increase transparency and reveal any circumstances where whistleblowing concerns are not addressed. The Government will want to allow time for this measure to take effect before they consider yet further measures. Introducing a body that has oversight of all investigatory action in response to whistleblowing concerns would be one way of going further, depending on what the need for further action was. But of course there could be other options for the Government to consider, based, as I have said, on evidence. Before introducing legislation, the Government will want to carry out a proper assessment of all available options to ensure that they are not introducing a body that was duplicating the existing functions of the regulators. This is a complex area.

Evaluation work will begin by the Department of Health publishing a consultation, which will explore the case for creating an independent whistleblowing guardian for the NHS. The Government will be able to use the evidence gathered from that consultation to look at the situation in other sectors. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having a proper evidence base and the fact that we have been able to fast-track the Francis recommendations because of the very powerful work that he has done.

The Government are committed to addressing the barriers that whistleblowers face. In addition to the measures in this Bill, we have made significant progress. Perhaps I could mention some other measures that we have taken forward. We are updating a set of comprehensive guidance for whistleblowers and employers as well as introducing a non-statutory code of practice for employers. The Government intend to publish this shortly. We have carried out work to update the list of prescribed persons. This is a list of more than 60 individuals and bodies, which includes all MPs, that a whistleblower can approach to raise their concerns. The Government have recently introduced separate legislation, which comes into force in April this year, to extend the scope of the whistleblowing framework to student nurses and student midwives.

The whistleblowing framework is improving and robust processes are in place for future work and the continuous review of the legislation that we have introduced. I hope that the noble Lord will agree that much further exploratory work would be required before proper consideration could be given to his proposal for a national whistleblowing review officer and for extending legislation to cover all job applicants, whether in the public or the private sector.

We have made a major change in relation to the NHS. Perhaps that has eclipsed the other important changes in this Bill and other progress that we have made on whistleblowing. I commend the Government’s amendment and invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, we are bringing in the new process provided for in the Bill which will allow greater review and engagement in those other sectors.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, this has been a short but worthwhile debate on some important issues about improving protections for the public through whistleblowing. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Phillips, for adding their names to the amendments and for their compelling arguments in support of them. I also thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for his powerful support. I am grateful also to the Minister, who throughout our discussions, both in Committee and again today, has engaged thoroughly and thoughtfully with all these complex issues and has been helpful and constructive.

In view of everything that the Minister has done so far, it is all the more disappointing that she has so summarily dismissed all the amendments. I accept the case that she made about review; I accept that there is a review process in place. Personally, I would like to see rather more frequent review, which may be a matter we can return to—although I reassure her that it will not be at Third Reading. I also accept the arguments that she made about the national review officer. This is a big and complex issue. There is a case to be made for seeing how the Francis recommendation beds down to learn the lessons from that, but I hope that it will remain on the Government’s agenda because it would be well worth pursuing.

However, I can see no good reason for the Government not to accept Amendment 58ZA. There is no good argument for confining protection for job applicants to those working in the NHS. The Minister made great play of the need to acquire more evidence. There are two problems with that approach. The first was identified by my noble friend Lord Hunt, which is that, by definition, it is extremely hard to find evidence of the harm that is done in advance of a scandal happening. When people working in professions such as the NHS, the financial sector and the police look at the examples, perhaps the rare examples, of their colleagues who have blown the whistle, they see the acute detriment that they have suffered as a result. Who is going to come forward and suffer in that way—which is actually the evidence that the Minister appears to be asking for? We know that there is a problem; we should be tackling it.

If we persist with the desire for more evidence and if that is what the Minister needs to make progress in tackling the loopholes that the Government have conceded exist, why has she just rejected my plea for her to commit to seeking out such evidence? The only reason that we are discussing the government amendment today is that a scandal happened with Mid Staffordshire, and Sir Robert Francis conducted his exhaustive and excellent inquiry and came up with the evidence. Do we have to wait for another such scandal in the financial sector finally to get to the bottom of all the skulduggery that lay behind the crash of 2008 and subsequently, or another scandal in the police such as Hillsborough, before the Minister acquires the evidence that we need to plug the loopholes?

I want to encourage the Government to think again. They have already shown themselves to be extremely flexible between Committee and Report. To encourage them to be similarly flexible between today and Third Reading, and in the hope that they will move forward in some of the ways that I have suggested today, I would like to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 58ZA. If I am successful, may I assume that the Government will accept my Amendment 59A as consequential, as it so closely mirrors the Government’s Amendment 58A on the creation of a national review officer?