Alex Allen Protect welcomes the Kark Review recommendations to give more teeth to the Fit and Proper Persons Test (FPPT) – which is in place to ensure senior staff responsible for quality and safety of care are fit for their roles. Led by Tom Kark QC, the review, commissioned by the government, looks at how effective the … Read more
Whistleblowers exposing illegal conduct or abuses of law in their workplace will soon have nothing to fear when revealing the truth, thanks to a new EU Directive to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. The EU law, once implemented, will see protection for whistleblowers in the public and private sector, including civil servants, the self-employed, shareholders and … Read more
In response to the #Metoo movement and scandals like the Presidents Club the government are consulting on limiting the use of confidentiality clauses – also known as non-disclosure agreements in sexual and racial harassment cases. The Government’s announcement to Parliament on Monday (March 4) made it clear that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have their legitimate … Read more
Five well-known European whistleblowers wrote directly to EU Vice President Frans Timmerman and Commissioner Věra Jourová calling on them to ensure a new law to protect whistleblowers across all 28 Member States removes any doubt that whistleblowers are protected for going directly to the competent authorities. The whistleblowers – Antoine Deltour (multinational tax avoidance schemes … Read more
Protect’s Head of Policy Andrew Pepper-Parsons attended the OneEducation Safeguarding conference in Manchester on 8 February to deliver a whistleblowing workshop for those tasked with overseeing or running safeguarding procedures within schools. Delegates were fairly expert on safeguarding and knew the appropriate way to handling a safeguarding issue raised with them, but my workshop emphasised … Read more
Protect is calling for a shake-up of UK regulatory bodies with enforcement powers, calling on them to ‘step up’ and better regulate the industries they monitor. Head of Policy at Protect, Andrew Pepper-Parsons, said, “Too many of our callers who approach their regulators find a dead end for their concerns, or receive stony silences instead … Read more
Whistleblowers play a key role in exposing corruption, public safety scandals and unethical behaviour. Unfortunately, all too often they can suffer fear, silence, and loneliness just from telling the truth. Protect, along with our partner, WIN (Whistleblowing International Network) is supporting the campaign #TruthNeedsFriends by the Green/EFA Group in the EU Parliament which hopes to … Read more
A governance report into local authorities by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found one in six councils do not have their whistleblowing policies easily available on their websites, and of the policies that the NAO could find – 24% were out-of-date. The report, Local Authority Governance, published 15 January, acknowledged the challenges facing local … Read more
Protect Head of Policy Andrew Pepper-Parsons attended conference Exposing Secrets: the past, present and future of U.S. National Security Whistleblowing and Government Secrecy which brought together academics, legal experts, journalists and a few US national security whistleblowers to debate the issues. The two-day conference on US national Security whistleblowing aimed to take a historic look … Read more
Protect attended a public meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Whistleblowing at Westminster chaired by Baroness Kramer along with many whistleblowers, including those with experience in education, care, the NHS and other public services. Attendees were generally in agreement about the principles of whistleblowing and that greater support for whistleblowers is needed. To this … Read more
