Debate on the Address

Mary Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the first King’s Speech debate for 70 years, not least because of its historic nature but also because the first day of the debate affords an ideal opportunity to speak about whistleblowing and whistleblowers’ protection, which is an issue that crosses all Departments and sectors.

While legislation keeps whistleblowing siloed as an employment and, thus, Department for Business and Trade matter, evidence shows that it is everyone’s issue, affecting every area. I will attempt to set out just a few of them. First, I welcome the measures in the King’s Speech to give the police more powers to tackle serious, complex economic and organised crime and to crush grooming gangs. We know that often the single most effective way to detect crime is through whistleblowers and informed insiders.

Whistleblowers are responsible for uncovering about half of economic crime in the UK. They play an important role in identifying wrongdoing across all sectors and all of society, from flagging medical negligence and cover-up to shining a light on sexual assault and the abuse of power. They are people who do the right thing, despite the risks to their reputation, the risk of retribution and the risk to their personal wellbeing. The problem is that those risks are high, so there is little incentive to take such a risk at all.

Further, whistleblowers are often ignored. While I welcome the measures that will rightly provide the police with additional powers to help them tackle child sexual abuse, including grooming, particularly when it occurs online, when grooming gangs were operating in Rotherham and Rochdale, the whistleblowers who brought attention to what was taking place were ignored or— worse—silenced, and the gangs were able to carry on for far too long.

On the occasions when whistleblowing is debated in this place, those debates are responded to by a Business Minister. I am delighted that the current Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)—is a former vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for whistleblowing, which I chair. However, given that there are whistleblowers in every sector, whistleblowing should be within the remit of a Minister in every Department and ultimate oversight should be with the Cabinet Office, as many have suggested.

As we know, omission from the King’s Speech does not mean that there is no scope for legislation, which is why I continue to call on the Government, following their framework review, to introduce laws to protect and support whistleblowers and to recognise that whistleblowing is more than just an employment matter. It is rare for there to be cross-party support on an issue, but I believe that protecting whistleblowers is one of those issues. We need a speaking-out protection for everyone, but at the moment the Government’s definition of a whistleblower is a worker who reports “certain types of wrongdoing.” The guidance clarifies that this wrongdoing will

“usually be something you’ve seen at work—though not always.”

The current legislation—which incidentally specifically mentions all Members of Parliament as having legal duties towards whistleblowers—is the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, or PIDA. This 25-year-old piece of legislation was a groundbreaking part of UK employment law, but is now not fit for purpose. It leaves myriad people, such as contractors, volunteers, trustees and the families of employees who may have witnessed or have evidence of wrongdoing, misconduct or even criminal activity, unprotected from any negative consequences that may ensue if they blow the whistle.

Openness and transparency should be the cornerstone of our society and institutions. Therefore, I look forward to hearing more about some of the measures that the Government intend to introduce, such as a legal duty of candour for police officers, requiring them to tell the truth to inquiries, investigations and public authorities. People would ask why we do not expect candour from all public servants anyway, backed up by legislation that encourages all people to speak out and to feel safe in doing so. In the NHS, following the recommendations of Sir Robert Francis’s inquiry into Mid Staffs, a statutory duty of candour was put into law for NHS trusts and other providers in 2014 and 2015. This duty plays an important role in a culture of openness and transparency, which is vital for patient safety, but despite that we continue to hear about whistleblowers being penalised for speaking up and raising concerns.

A statutory duty of candour must be backed up by a change in culture and whistleblower protections. We do not need to be reminded of the doctors who raised the alarm over the murders of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more at the Countess of Chester Hospital. They should have been listened to from the start, not silenced or made to apologise to the killer. Their jobs hung in the balance, and while they ultimately kept their livelihoods and have since been vindicated, it is extraordinary that it took so long for them to be heard and for the matter to be taken seriously. I have heard from one of the doctors at first hand, and I was shocked at how the situation unfolded. Not only is it reasonable to believe that lives could have been saved if concerns had been taken seriously, but the killer was treated like the victim and the whistleblowers like the offenders.

Many of those doctors have suffered personal detriment as a result of that treatment—details that we know discourage people from speaking up. The law, PIDA, does not incentivise speaking up and, if anything, is an effective deterrent. Whistleblowers, including even those who come within its scope, all say the same thing: PIDA does not work. That is confirmed by the evidence provided by the courts that less than 4% of cases succeed at employment tribunal and that not a single case of wrongdoing has been escalated in the 25 years of PIDA’s existence.

In transport, the measures in the rail reform Bill to improve our rail network and ensure an efficient service and particularly accountability will be welcomed by my Cheadle constituents. I mention the importance of accountability because it relates to HS2 and the report just the other week in The Times, which revealed that an individual who blew the whistle on HS2 Ltd’s alleged cover-up of mounting costs not only did not have his contract renewed, but struggled for more than a year to find other employment in his industry, which he attributes to his whistleblowing. He is not alone. In the media, it was a whistleblower who exposed the use of fake bank statements by Martin Bashir to support false claims in his interviews with Earl Spencer, yet his whistleblowing led to him being sacked after raising concerns. In some industries, whistleblowers are still deterred by the fear of blacklisting.

We tend to focus on deterring negative or criminal behaviour, as we should; however, perhaps now is the time to consider incentivising positive behaviours as well. I met someone from a local business this summer and was told how important the furlough scheme and covid-19 business loans were to their firm, but, having struggled to do the right thing and pay back the loan, they were frustrated that so many businesses are simply leaving the loans unpaid—some in the hope, perhaps, that they might never need to repay them.

I am pleased that the Government are taking action to deal with that, because we know that public sector fraud has grown since the covid-19 pandemic began. The Public Accounts Committee reported recently that these swiftly rolled out schemes were vulnerable to fraud and error, and were exploited to the tune of millions. They were good schemes that kept people in work and businesses afloat. Both the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury have committed to recovering as much public money as possible, but they accept that most of the £21 billion lost to fraud during the pandemic will not be recoverable, so a commitment to that recovery is welcome.

While it is vital that our laws and penalties are robust—the King’s Speech sets out many further measures and laws that will be put in place—we must not just deter individuals from committing crimes, but punish the ones who do, and punish them properly. We should support and perhaps also compensate those who come forward to share information about wrongdoing—those who are sometimes at risk of personal detriment.

It is rare that I would reference speeches given at the Labour party conference, but on this occasion I will. I noticed that the shadow Foreign Secretary commented in a speech at the conference that his party would introduce a new whistleblower scheme to reward those who expose stolen assets and sanction breaches and help to recover misappropriated funds. In my view, this should perhaps go even further and not be limited to whistleblowers who expose stolen assets and sanction breaches. We should seek to recover the estimated £350 billion lost to economic crime in the UK annually. We should recognise that all those who come forward to do the right thing and bring criminals to justice, stop negligence and malpractice, and highlight flaws in the system are doing it for all our benefit. We should be a country where doing the right thing is encouraged and celebrated, not a cause for punishment and detriment. We should be the country that makes whistleblowing work for everyone.