Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if the Government will assess the effectiveness of (a) protections in law for workers from penalisation for whistle-blowing and (b) incentives to ensure that workers are not dissuaded from raising matters of improper conduct relating to their place of work.

In 2013 the Government published a wide-ranging call for evidence on the effectiveness of the whistleblowing framework. The Government’s response in 2014 set out a plan of legislative and non-legislative actions to improve the framework: those actions are essentially complete. We believe that the legal framework is effective, but as the Government response said, the legal framework in isolation cannot prevent malpractice or encourage people to raise their concerns. The steps that we have taken since 2014 also help to address the wider cultural barriers to effective whistleblowing.

The Government considers that financial incentives for whistleblowers would be unlikely to increase the number of quality disclosures received and could have adverse consequences.