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3 minutes 30 seconds
Whistleblowers are the early warning system for our society. They speak up when they witness wrongdoing, often at considerable personal risk, to prevent harm to the public, protect public finances, and uphold ethical standards. Despite their crucial role in exposing corruption, fraud, and safety issues, many whistleblowers find their concerns dismissed or buried—leaving serious problems to fester until they become full-blown scandals or tragedies.
At Protect, the UK’s leading whistleblowing charity, we have called for organisations to support the creation of a legal duty for companies to investigate whistleblowing. With the support from of Transparency International UK, Whistleblowing International Network (WIN), the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition, Spotlight on Corruption, Parrhesiaand Professor Robert Barrington, we have proposed a much-needed amendment to the Employment Rights Bill, which requires employers to take reasonable steps to investigate facts brought to them by a whistleblower.
The government are full steam ahead with their Employment Rights Bill and Security Minister Dan Jarvis has set anti-corruption as a government priority, promising a new strategy before the summer recess. We face a once in a generation opportunity to improve the UK’s outdated whistleblowing laws and to, in Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s own words, ‘make Britain the anti-corruption capital of the world’.
Home Office Guidance on the Failure to Prevent Fraud already sets an expectation for large companies to have whistleblowing arrangements, but we need bold legal reform that will make a real difference. We want to see a legal duty to investigate whistleblowing concerns placed on all employers, and for major employers, such as with 50+ employees or an annual turnover of £10 million, to also be mandated to have whistleblowing arrangements.
The Grenfell Tower disaster, the Infected Blood scandal, the Post Office scandal and the Lucy Letby murders at the Countess of Chester Hospital - a series of disasters that have shaped public life and resulted in thousands of lives lost and countless torn apart. The common thread? Each could have been avoided if whistleblowers were listened to earlier.
On top of the human cost of ignoring whistleblowers, Protect’s latest report, the Cost of Whistleblowing Failures found that ignoring whistleblowers has cost the public purse £426,338,460 across just three recent failures: the collapse of Carillion, the Post Office and the Lucy Letby scandal. This could have funded the construction of 14 new schools, 21 years of running a prison and 1,440 doctors and 2,580 nurses' salaries for 5 years.
There currently exists no duty on employers to act on the information brought to them and Protect hears time and time again that doors are slammed in the faces of those who speak up. It is gravely concerning that, in 2024, 40% of Protect’s callers reported being ignored by their employers, their concerns disappearing into a black hole.
“It felt like doors kept being slammed in my face”, Anonymous Whistleblower
“It is so nice to hear that I am not going mad”, Anonymous Whistleblower
“It’s a relief to speak openly about my concerns and to finally not be shut down”, Anonymous Whistleblower
The human and financial cost of ignoring whistleblowers is stark and, with the government pledging to make a historic impact on employment rights, it is time that they heed demands to bring forth a legal duty on employers to investigate whistleblowing reports.
Once revolutionary, 27 years on, the UK’s whistleblowing law has not kept pace with international best practice. Too many whistlebowers are ignored, too many continue to be victimised and too few are afforded legal protection. UK law has been surpassed by the far-reaching EU Directive on Whistleblowing which in 2019, became the new “gold standard”, imposing legal standards on employers to have whistleblowing arrangements.
Relying on the goodwill of employers does not work. The UK must keep up with international best practice and impose legal standards on employers. With most fraud detected by whistleblowers, the duty will mean economic crime can be identified and stamped out early on, and that ruinous consequences can be averted.
A legal duty to investigate will bring UK law closer to our European neighbours’ at a critical moment in time, when being a united front against unethical business is more important than ever.