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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Henley on 27 November (HL Deb, col 485), what precisely was revised in 1998 in respect of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 amended the Employment Rights Act 1996. It provided a right of redress for workers who are dismissed or suffer detriment at the hands of their employer because they ‘blew the whistle’ by making a protected disclosure.

To ensure that whistleblowers have the confidence that a disclosure is effectively looked into the Government has recently introduced a duty for prescribed persons to report annually on the number of whistleblowing disclosures they receive. The duty will help to increase confidence in the actions taken by prescribed persons through greater transparency about how disclosures are handled. It will also help improve consistency across different bodies in the way they respond to disclosures.