Charities and politicians have called on the government to strengthen UK whistleblowing laws, after criticising current rules as “a discredited and distrusted law that has failed to protect whistleblowers”.
The government has launched a review of the UK whistleblowing framework – the laws that support workers who disclose criminal activity, breaches of legal obligations, health and safety concerns and environmental damage in the workplace – to ensure its effectiveness.
In response to calls for reform, and as promised in the Commons last autumn, the government has now pledged to tighten legislation to strengthen protections for workers who blow the whistle on wrongdoing.
The review aims to investigate whistleblowing protections, the availability of information and guidance for whistleblowing as well as how employers and prescribed persons respond to whistleblowing disclosures, including best practice.
Workers who report workplace wrongdoing are protected through the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) with successive governments having tweaked the law over the years.
Last year in a report published by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Whistleblowing, Mary Robinson MP, the group’s chair, launched a scathing attack on the current laws: “In 1998 The Public Interest Disclosure Act was celebrated globally as groundbreaking; 24 years later only 4% of people who bring claims succeed. PIDA is now a discredited and distrusted law that has failed to protect...
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