Public Interest Disclosure (Protection) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-09-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome that intervention, but whistleblowing should not have to be a risk. It should be a normal part of someone’s work or their duty as a citizen to come forward and report something The Bill defines whistleblowing disclosures, but it also widens the definition of "relevant authorities" to include not just employers, but public authorities and regulators, as many whistleblowers report that when they have involved regulators, they have been intimidated in exactly the same way and have made no progress. It places a duty on all relevant authorities not to subject whistleblowers to any form of detriment, and indeed, to protect them from detriment, but particularly—I cannot reiterate this more strongly—to investigate the concern and take action to prevent a recurrence The Bill widens the list of professions in which a disclosure may be made to include those previously excluded, such as religious ministers and police officers. Let us consider the cases of child abuse that might have been prevented had priests and ministers been able to speak up, or how much earlier the families of the Hillsborough victims could have been told the truth and given closure The Bill also includes those who were not previously defined as employees, such as trainees, interns and volunteers. I am sure that all of us who have taken an interest in this topic are well aware of the four-year persecution of Dr Chris Day, who warned about unsafe staffing in his intensive care unit, only to be told that junior doctors were not classed as NHS employees and that he had no protection. Although that anomaly has been resolved, it highlights the traps that unsuspecting whistleblowers can fall into The Bill seeks to establish an independent body with statutory powers to oversee whistleblowing. I have called it a commission in the Bill, but I do not care what it is called. After his report into the deaths in Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert Francis established the "freedom to speak up system", but the national guardian is not a statutory role and the local guardians are trust employees who themselves may be put under pressure when investigating a case. That comes back to the point raised in an intervention earlier: there needs to be absolute objectivity and a determination to deal with an issue locally, rather than it becoming a festering sore. By contrast, the Scottish Independent National Whistleblowing Office was established as a statutory body in 2018. It published its draft standards for the NHS and social care last year Devolved Governments will develop whistleblower-support systems for their public services, but PIDA is the underpinning legislation for all sectors—including businesses and financial services—and it no longer serves its purpose. The commission’s duty would be to protect whistleblowers and promote the principle of whistleblowing in the public interest. Such a body would develop standards of practice for whistleblowing policies and procedures and monitor the compliance of organisations with those standards. Such standards would include how issues should be investigated, and organisations would be expected to show what action they had taken to address cases. The standards would stipulate prospective protection of the whistleblower from detriment, from the point of their making a disclosure, including by preserving their anonymity and confidentiality—many whistleblowers suddenly find themselves splattered across the local paper The commission would also seek to resolve cases and reduce litigation, which is wasteful of public funds and both expensive and traumatic for the whistleblower. It could provide advice to whistleblowers who do not have any other route to report an issue or who are not making progress locally. It would be able to issue redress orders to try to repair detriment suffered by a whistleblower, rather than just making financial awards, and it would include the banning of non-disclosure agreements, which whistleblowers are often intimidated into signing. When staff have been subject to deliberate detriment, there would be the ability for civil action. As in Australia, criminal charges would be available for the most egregious cases of whistleblower persecution There are different ways to improve the quality of a service, and whistleblowing should not be the main method of detecting poor practice, the squandering of public funds or fraud. Just as audit is critical to ensure probity in the financial sector, it is also essential to detect poor clinical practice. In Scotland, we have had regular reporting against quality improvement standards for the most common cancers for many years. In the case of my specialty, breast cancer, I was involved in leading the development of the standards almost 20 years ago. The process identifies outliers, who can then be supported to update their practice, but it also creates peer pressure to drive clinical improvement, as people know that their performance is going to be shared at a conference, openly and transparently, every single year It is important to normalise incident reporting and encourage a culture of routinely raising issues without the sense of conflict and pressure associated with whistleblowing. That is the aim of systems such as Datix in the NHS, through which staff record, review and seek to learn from all incidents, from minor to major, including near misses. There will, however, always be cases that cannot be detected by audit, such as alcohol or drug misuse, bullying or racism. For that, whistleblowers are essential For whistleblowers to speak up early and reduce harm, they must be valued, supported and protected. In the NHS, that is about patient safety, which is literally a matter of life and death.