Free, confidential whistleblowing advice
Call us on 020 3117 2520 or email us

DONATE

Member Login

whistleblowers

Job applicants outside the NHS can’t claim whistleblowing protection – over to Parliament to right this wrong. 

by

In a disappointing judgment, the Court of Appeal has said that job applicants are not protected if they blow the whistle, and in doing so has thrown the ball firmly back into Parliament’s court to decide who is, and who is not, a whistleblower. More positively, the Court restated the value of whistleblowing and noted the purpose of the law is “to protect the public interest by ensuring that information about wrongdoing, or threats to health and safety or the environment, could be disclosed”

A small step forward, but will the Lords leap on whistleblowing reform?

by

The government’s landmark Employment Rights Bill has now bounced from the Commons to the Lords as it continues its progress through Parliament. After a highly scrutinised passage through the Commons that led to more than 200 pages of amendments tabled at the Report Stage and Third Reading the Bill will be debated in the Lords for the first time on Thursday 27 March. This Bill provides a critical opportunity to improve whistleblowing protections for everyone in the workplace and revamp the way employers address and manage whistleblowing.  

From toxic work culture to an entire toxic town

by

Every scandal comes to light, in the wake of ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, whistleblowing scandals are now taking centre stage on TV with New Netflix series ‘Toxic Town’, starring Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education and The White Lotus), and Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker. The show has been labelled the UK’s Erin Brockovich, as a group of women take on their local council and the local steelworks following a pattern of birth defects in young children that whistleblowers were able to prove could have been avoided. 

What the Employment Rights Bill means for whistleblowing

by

The government’s flagship Employment Rights Bill, rapidly moving throught the stages of Parliament, offers an opportunity to overhaul how employers and colleagues treat both whistleblowers and the how people raise concerns. We’re very pleased to see a great focus on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace, and extensions of time limits for bringing an employment tribunal claim. But as welcome as these changes are, they are not ambitious enough to strengthen whistleblowing protections which the Government committed to during the 2024 election.

What is the cost to the taxpayer when whistleblowers are ignored

by

It is well documented that when whistleblowers are not listened to organisations can collapse, livelihoods can be lost, and people can lose their lives. There’s lots of research examining the treatment of whistleblowers when they try to speak up and what employers should do to be better. But what about the bigger cost to society – and in financial terms – the cost to all of us, the taxpayers, when things go wrong and the government has to step in and pick up the pieces?

A to Z of Whistleblowing

by

To mark World Whistleblowers Day, 23rd June, we turned our social media channels into a whistleblowing alphabet – starting with A for Anti-Slapp and ending with Z for Gen Z. The language surrounding whistleblowing can be complex. Legal jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms are an intrinsic part of the world of whistleblowing and we wanted to break some of this down in accessible and digestible ways.

Anti-SLAPPs and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act: What’s next?

by

Protect welcomes the introduction of the first anti-SLAPPs legislation in the UK, but is clear this doesn’t go far enough and there needs to be a dedicated law. SLAPPs continue to threaten the right to speak out and speak up, are a significant threat to democracy and place whistleblowers in a vulnerable position.