Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of protections against retaliation for individuals who make whistleblowing disclosures within charities.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
We recognise that whistleblowing can play an important role in holding charities to account. Charity workers have protections the same as a worker in any sector and are also able to make disclosures to the Charity Commission about their charity. While volunteers, including charity trustees, do not have the same statutory whistleblowing protections as workers, the Department considers the current protections for those who make whistleblowing disclosures, regardless of their status, to be appropriate. The Charity Commission treats whistleblowing disclosures by volunteers and trustees in the same way as disclosures by workers. The Department has no plans to review whistleblowing protections for volunteers or others involved in the governance of charities.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what guidance her Department provides on protections available to charity trustees who raise concerns about potential wrongdoing within a charity.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Charity Commission for England and Wales publishes guidance for charities on a range of subjects, including reporting serious wrongdoing at a charity as a worker or volunteer.
While volunteers, including charity trustees, do not have the same statutory whistleblowing protections as workers, the Charity Commission treats whistleblowing disclosures by volunteers and trustees in the same way as disclosures by workers.
Asked by: Seamus Logan (Scottish National Party - Aberdeenshire North and Moray East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 26 November 2025 to Question 92495 on Civil Servants: Disclosure of Information, what is the evidence basis for the Government’s view that an independent Office for the Whistleblower would (a) be duplicative and (b) what would this be duplicative of.
Answered by Nick Thomas-Symonds - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
There are well established whistleblowing processes in place across government. Individual government departments are responsible for determining and setting their whistleblowing arrangements and procedures. In addition, the Civil Service Commission is an independent body that can hear and determine concerns by civil servants that relate to the Civil Service Code, where it has already been raised formally under the Code with the relevant Department.
Asked by: Lloyd Hatton (Labour - South Dorset)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the Treasury plans to introduce additional protections for individuals who face retaliation as a result of engaging with the HMRC whistleblowing reward scheme; and whether HMRC will be required to provide support to whistleblowers involved in employment disputes or SLAPP-type legal proceedings arising from their disclosures.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC treats all informants with the highest levels of confidentiality and security in line with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Codes of Practice.
There is no legal obligation on HMRC to participate in an employment tribunal of an informant. However, if requested, HMRC can provide a disclosure to the informant or their legal representative to support any employment tribunal under Sec 18 (2)(c) Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005.
Asked by: Lloyd Hatton (Labour - South Dorset)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department will take to ensure transparency in the operation of HMRC's proposed whistleblowing reward scheme; and whether she plans to publish (a) eligibility criteria and award thresholds for applicants, and (b) data on the number and value of awards granted.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
At Autumn Budget on 26 November 2025 the Government launched the Rewards for informants of high value tax fraud. This scheme is designed to target serious non-compliance involving large corporates, wealthy individuals, offshore and avoidance schemes. Informants can receive a reward of between 15 and 30% when they provide information which leads directly to HMRC collecting more than £1.5M tax. HMRC have published eligibility criteria for the scheme at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/reporting-serious-tax-avoidance-and-evasion.
HMRC has previously published data on the total amount of rewards paid annually through the standard informants reward scheme and will continue to do so. To protect the confidentiality of informants we do not publish the number of rewards or size of individual rewards.
Asked by: Seamus Logan (Scottish National Party - Aberdeenshire North and Moray East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the contribution by the Minister of 12 November 2025, col 285, on the Nolan Principles, what the evidence basis was for stating that the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee did not recommend the creation of an independent Office for the Whistleblower due to the risk of duplication.
Answered by Chris Ward - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The National Audit Office made four recommendations in the report following its investigation into whistleblowing in the Civil Service and the Public Accounts Committee made five recommendations in its subsequent report.
Neither report recommended setting up an independent Office of the Whistleblower, and I have since corrected Hansard to clarify that the reports themselves did not refer to a risk of duplication. It is the Government’s position that an independent Office of the Whistleblower would be duplicative.
The full text of the reports are available online.
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/investigation-whistleblowing-civil-service.pdf
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmpubacc/457/report.html
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of trends in the level of the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements during corporate restructuring in safety-critical sectors; and whether he plans to take steps to ensure non-disclosure agreements cannot be used prevent employees and union representatives from participating in statutory consultation processes.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government is unable to assess sector-based trends on the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) as they are private contractual agreements and data on their use is not collected.
While NDAs can lawfully be used to require one or more parties to keep certain information confidential (for example, trade secrets), there are a range of legal limitations on their use. For example, NDAs cannot prevent someone from making a whistleblowing disclosure (known formally as a “protected disclosure”) or a disclosure required by law.
Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland and Fakenham)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she plans to establish an independent mechanism for public reporting of rail safety incidents.
Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The main independent mechanism for publicly reporting safety incidents on the railways is the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS). The Office of Rail and Road also operate an anonymous whistleblowing service. Therefore, no plans exist to create an additional independent mechanism for public reporting of rail safety incidents.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many employment tribunal claims have been lodged against his Department by (a) unfair dismissal and (b) claims under the Equality Act 2010 in each of the last five years.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The below tables show the number of Employment Tribunal claims recorded under the categories of (a) unfair dismissal and (b) claims under the Equality Act 2010 for each financial year from 2020-21 to 2025-26.
It is important to note that some cases are recorded with one claim category, such as unfair dismissal, while others are recorded with multiple claim categories, such as constructive dismissal and failure to make reasonable adjustments which is why claims under the Equality Act 2010 have increased.
Figures fewer than 3 have been replaced with [c] to limit inadvertent disclosure of personal data.
| Number of Claims | |
Financial Year | Unfair Dismissal | Under the Equality Act 2010 |
2020-2021 | [c] | 4 |
2021-2022 | 10 | 14 |
2022-2023 | 7 | 23 |
2023-2024 | 9 | 27 |
2024-2025 | 9 | 27 |
2025-2026 | 18 | 39 |
Defence must be an environment in which everyone feels supported, valued, and confident to give their best, regardless of their backgrounds. There are a number of live intiiatives in the Department I am overseeing, designed to encourage individuals to feel safe and able to raise concerns about inappropriate behaviour and result in 100% action where it is proven, demonstrating Defence takes such concerns seriously.
In addition to the MOD Raising our Standards programme, a civilian HR Casework Improvements Project is reviewing the end-to-end delivery of HR casework. It launched a new universal casework model in February 2025 which overhauled HR systems, policies and procedures to ensure they are more supportive and fair, independent and transparent, with efficiencies reducing timescales; all ultimately improving the employee experience. Further more, in response to feedback on our current Raising a Concern (Whistleblowing) Policy and Procedure, Defence has committed to a comprehensive, ministerial-led review of Whistleblowing in Defence. The final report and recommendations from this Review are to be published and laid before Parliament in April 2026.
Asked by: Max Wilkinson (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of whistleblower protections.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government recognises that the whistleblowing framework in the Employment Rights Act 1996 may not be operating as effectively as intended. My Department in July published an independent review into the framework, which did not make formal recommendations for reform but did provide some useful analyses on the functioning of the framework based on stakeholder engagement and a literature review.
The review is a helpful contribution to the governments ongoing assessment of the framework, and the Government welcomes the continued engagement of parliamentarians and stakeholders on this important area of public policy.