Seeking to reverse 24 years of underachievement, UK lawmakers are working to repair the country’s broken whistleblower protection system.
Mary Robinson, a Conservative Parliament member from the Manchester village of Cheadle, introduced a long-awaited reform bill in the House of Commons on April 26. The measure seeks to fix many well-documented problems with the UK’s current whistleblower law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA). Only the second law of its kind in the world when it was passed in 1998, PIDA won early praise but since has allowed a vast majority of whistleblowers to suffer retaliation with little or no legal recourse.
“PIDA, our world-leading legislation, is now seen as a discredited and distrusted law that has failed to protect whistleblowers or the public,” Robinson said in an impassioned speech. “The reality is that our current legislation is not working. Where we once led the way, we now lag behind.”
Robinson’s remarks come nine years after one of PIDA’s original co-authors warned about the law’s major weaknesses. “PIDA is dangerous for whistleblowers because people think they have stronger protection under it than they actually do,” former MP Lord Touhig told The Guardian in 2013. “It is tired, frayed at the edges and needs to be thoroughly reviewed.”
Robinson’s bill has the potential to revolutionize the system. Most critically, it would establish an independent Office of the Whistleblower to help vulnerable witnesses in the workplace. “The...
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