After months of relentless campaigning and lobbying across Parliament this month we struck gold in the House of Lords when peers voted through one of our amendments to the Employment Rights Bill.
Tabled by Baroness Kramer, the addition to the Bill pushes the Government to broaden unfair dismissal grounds and force employers, of a certain size and turnover, to take reasonable steps to investigate when whistleblowers speak up. The amendment won the support of 248 Peers, passing with a majority just shy of a hundred. We are deeply thankful to Lord Wills, Baroness Kramer, and every Peer who tabled and supported this amendment.
This is the moment Baroness Kramer introduced the vote:
This is a huge step forward in improving the way whistleblowing is dealt with in the workplace. Currently employers are under no obligation to look into the issues that whistleblowers bring to them. We know, only too well, that it’s often the whistleblower themselves that is investigated, rather than the concerns they raise. Additionally, many whistleblowers are ignored, meaning that potential wrongdoing, health and safety, fraud, and in some cases, criminal malpractice, are not addressed. This change will ensure that organisations with more than 50 staff, or a turnover of more than £10 million, will have to investigate the whistleblowing concerns and report on what they find.
So how did we get here? And who has helped these changes make it into the bill?
Background to the campaign
This time last year the government swept to power, elected on a platform of creating a “New Deal for Working People” putting workers’ rights at the heart of their legislative agenda. We identified the Employment Rights Bill as the main vehicle to push for improvements in whistleblowing law – and a way for the government to follow through on their promise to strengthen protections for whistleblowers.
With a new intake of politicians and staff we worked hard engaging with allies in Parliament and civil society to promote our cause for whistleblowing reform and build consensus for change.
What we put forward
We developed three core amendments to the bill. The first was the introduction of a Duty to Investigate, creating a requirement on all employers to take “reasonable steps” to investigate whistleblowing concerns brought to them. The second was the Extension of Whistleblowing Protections expanding legal protections to self-employed people, office holders, non-executive directors and trustees, trade union representatives, and job applicants. In our existing diverse and complex labour market, many of those who want to, or are expected to, blow the whistle simply aren’t protected. The third was a change to the Dismissal Test. Currently it is extremely difficult to win a claim of automatic unfair dismissal for whistleblowing at a tribunal. A whistleblower must demonstrate to the tribunal that their action of blowing the whistle was the main, or principal, reason for their dismissal. Too easily employers point to other reasons – e.g. the whistleblower’s behaviour or a breakdown of the employment relationship. Whistleblowers will likely cause upset and anger as they challenge accepted practices or powerful people. This amendment would change the test from “more than one, the principal reason” to “one of the reasons”, ensuring that whistleblowers have a better chance of winning their cases.
Key moments
With these core policy asks, we worked with Members of Parliament and Peers across all parties as the bill made its passage through the Commons and Lords. It began in October 2024 with three former Ministers speaking to The Times and endorsing our amendment to introduce a Duty to Investigate. Then, as the Bill progressed to the Committee Stage in the House of Commons, Liberal Democrat MPs Sarah Gibson and Steve Darling championed the change we had been advocating to simplify the legal test for automatic unfair dismissal in whistleblowing cases.
As the Bill moved to the Lords, we worked with a number of influential cross-party Peers including the former Labour Justice Minister Michael Wills, Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer, Green Peer Jenny Jones, former Conservative Cabinet Minister Nicky Morgan and crossbench Peer Lord Cromwell. We put down similar versions of our three amendments to be addressed in the Committee Stage debates, tabled by Lord Wills, which saw significant support from across the Upper House. With the Bill now returning to the Commons after the summer recess, the Duty to Investigate amendment has made it through and will now be reviewed by the government and key officials in the Department of Business and Trade.
What happens now?
We are hugely grateful for the support we’ve received for whistleblowing reform throughout this entire process. Over the course of these debates, we’ve seen the government concede that whistleblowing law needs to be reviewed and Parliament vote to support that change. We may have won a concession, but this is by no means a certainty of the amendment surviving through to Royal Assent. While this has been a win in the Lords, we now start a game of ping-pong with the Bill bouncing back to the Commons. When Parliament returns in September we will continue the fight as the Bill goes back to the House of Commons to ensure the government keeps its word and finally creates a whistleblowing framework fit for the 21st Century.
Whilst the Minister Justin Madders opposed the amendments proposed, this led to the first pledge from the government that “in due course we will be looking at the whole area of whistleblowing”. These amendments were not put to a vote, but their proposal at this stage led to an important first concession.
As the Bill moved onto the Report Stage in Commons, the backbench Labour MP Alex Sobel tabled a Duty to Investigate amendment and received support from MPs across the House, including the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Julian Smith. In the Report Stage debate, Justin Madders conceded even further, stating to the House that he had “begun to consider” adopting a Duty to Investigate.
Alex Sobel stated that “The status quo provides only an after-the-event remedy for whistleblowers, and this new clause would ensure that there are channels for whistleblowers from the start.”