Public Interest Disclosure (Protection) Bill

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Mary Robinson

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), whom I congratulate on not only securing the debate but on bringing forward a detailed and considered Bill that is an important and positive contribution to the growing consensus for reform of our whistleblowing legislation. Her in-depth knowledge of the healthcare sector enables her to speak with authority and passion on the subject, as was evident in her speech. I welcome the Bill, because it is right to push for reform. Indeed, dissatisfaction with the present situation among a wide range of groups, individuals and Members of Parliament across the political spectrum has grown into a clamour for reform.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for whistleblowing, I am pleased to work with the support of our secretariat, WhistleblowersUK, which shares that commitment to drive reform. The APPG has given its support to the Office of the Whistleblower Bill, which has been presented in the other place by Baroness Kramer. The whistleblowing charity Protect also continues to work towards reforming legislation. On the Government Benches, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who is a vice-chair of the APPG, has championed whistleblowers in the banking and financial sector. I also pay tribute to the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption champion, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who spoke in the foreword to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s “Review into the risks of fraud and corruption in local government procurement” about the need to

“bake in a counter fraud and corruption culture from top to bottom of every Council, so whistleblowers know they will be supported rather than victimised”.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire for providing this opportunity to discuss the inadequacy of the law as it stands.

The current law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, was at the time a trailblazing piece of legislation, growing out of employment rights and the drive for a fair relationship between employers, employees and workers. Sadly, as time has passed, PIDA has not lived up to its promise. The hon. Member is right to highlight its flaws.

For many potential whistleblowers, retaliation remains too great a threat to take the risk of speaking up. Evidence provided to the APPG suggests that, because of the grave personal consequences that whistleblowers can face, less than half of those who raise concerns follow them up. A survey last year by the APPG found that 78% of whistleblowers were subject to retaliation. Blacklisting also remains a problem. Some whistleblowers have withdrawn their cases to avoid their identity becoming public and jeopardising their future employability.

As the hon. Member said, the only recourse for an employee who faces retaliation, including unfair dismissal for whistleblowing, is through an employment tribunal, and only 3% are successful when they take their cases forward. Even after success, the compensation, which averages 28%, is often vastly exceed by the terrible financial and emotional cost of bringing a case. PIDA, sadly, is toothless and overly complex, and it lacks the backing it needs to be effective.

There is also an unacceptable lack of clarity about some simple questions. Who is a whistleblower and what counts as a whistleblowing? As long as that is unclear among businesses, institutions and even regulators, and as long as the law does not provide clear standards to follow nor ensure that those organisations understand their legal obligations to whistleblowers, those whistleblowers will not get the protection they need.

Changes over the last decade relating to prescribed persons have been welcome, but by now, three and a half years after the annual reporting requirement for prescribed persons was introduced, evidence shows that those changes have not provided sufficient protection for our whistleblowers. A 2015 report by the National Audit Office found that it was not clear what was expected of a prescribed person and that more could be done to explain their remit.

[Dr Whitford]

I was surprised when I was elected as an MP suddenly to discover that I was a prescribed person. We received no training or induction whatsoever.

[Mary Robinson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out because that is exactly the case. I wonder how many MPs realise the requirements that the legislation places on them and whether they understand how best to fulfil them.

I want to think about those who have come forward and blown the whistle because they are the people we are talking about—ordinary, working people who first alerted us not only to issues in the national health service, but to furlough fraud during the pandemic, as they went to work knowing that their employers were also claiming moneys through the job retention scheme. Other workers have blown the whistle on failures to implement social distancing in the workplace and inadequate personal protective equipment provision. In doing so, they have helped protect people from exploitation and from exposure to the virus. Meanwhile, reports of the Chinese regime retaliating against whistleblowing doctors such as Li Wenliang, who raised the alarm about the virus in December, demonstrate more starkly than ever that failure to listen to whistleblowers costs a million lives and causes a global economic crisis.

In my view, every Department stands to benefit from reform. Whistleblowing has been and is vital to the Treasury’s efforts to combat financial fraud, the Home Office’s fight against modern slavery, the Department for Education’s attempts to root out malpractice, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s efforts to address procurement malpractice and fraud in local authorities and the wider public sector, as well as the uncovering of child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester and Rotherham.

I wish the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire every success. I hope that we can work together. In my view, working together on important legislation that will be robust and fit for purpose is what we all want. I urge the Minister to work with Departments to ensure that they are behind a Bill that could really make a difference to valuing whistleblowers and changing our practices.