As whistleblower protection laws around the world continue to be put to the test, society learns more about which of these laws succeed or fail – and why. Here is a wrap-up of recent developments and findings.
Despite the well-documented weaknesses of the UK’s 24-year-old whistleblower protection law, one of the country’s whistleblower NGO has come out against replacing it.
Sybille Raphael, legal director of the UK’s leading whistleblower advocacy NGO Protect, wrote that the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) “can no doubt be improved” but that none of the law’s many problems “calls for a repeal.” Andrew Pepper-Parsons, Protect’s head of policy, told WNN that PIDA “as it stands is flawed” for reasons including being “silent on what an employer should put in place [for employees] in terms of resources.” However, he said, “reforming the law rather than repealing the whole thing is the most sensible way to proceed.”
Writing “in defence of PIDA,” Raphael said the law’s whistleblower reporting system, which strongly encourages employees first to approach managers, “works in practice.” Pepper-Parsons agreed, saying PIDA “is effective in recognising that most whistleblowers want to raise their concerns with their employer.”
Research shows, however, that reporting corruption and other misconduct to supervisors and managers can be perilous. In a survey of 1,000 employees by Protect (then known as Public Concern at Work), 60...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...
