The latest version of Baroness Kramer’s (pictured below) Protection for Whistleblowing Bill calls for the immediate repeal of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA), the employment law currently protecting whistleblowers. It proposes instead that an Office for the Whistleblower is set up within a year. We fear this would create a black hole for future whistleblowers – who would be left with no employment rights and an untested new regulator yet to be established. Should the bill be passed (which is unlikely) it would leave whistleblowers with less ‘protection’ than they have now.

We at Protect are getting increasingly worried about all this talk of repealing PIDA – and characterising this as ‘deregulation’, while at the same time trying to introduce a ‘super regulator’. Workers should have better and more effective employment rights, not fewer.

We are not opposed to a new Office of the Whistleblower, if it had a role of setting and enforcing standards for employers and other regulators, but it need not be at the expense of workers’ rights.

Protect is the UK’s leading authority on whistleblowing and for nearly 30 years we have run a free and confidential legal advice service for whistleblowers. We have individually advised more than 45,000 whistleblowers to date. We also offer training and consultancy to organisations seeking to improve their whistleblowing arrangements. This gives a unique expertise into what works and what does not work well, and feeds into our...

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