Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to what the noble Baroness said but, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, I am not sure that another statutory body is the right way to deal with this. Thinking back to my experience in the NHS, I cannot think of the number because there have been so many whistleblowing initiatives. There have been edicts and circulars, and I think we have some legislation as well. But I think we would find it hard to say that we think the NHS has a culture in which whistleblowers feel confident to come forward; they do not. The noble Baroness has raised an important question, which I hope the Government will consider. We need to start talking to the leaders of organisations to understand what the issue is in relation to whistleblowers. It is, of course, partly the point that the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, raised; sometimes whistleblowers can be awkward people and therefore have already built up a feeling against them. Sometimes they could be making trouble, but very often they are raising legitimate points. Part of the problem is the punitive culture for senior managers in much of the public sector. Why do NHS chief execs discourage whistleblowing? It is because we have a punitive culture. The turnover rate of CEOs in the health service is frightening; it is so rapid. Somehow, to deal with whistleblowing, you have to look at a much wider issue of whether we set conditions in which leaders have greater freedom to develop and grow their organisations from the current micromanagement they often come under. We also need a culture in which, if CEOs really do encourage their staff to raise concerns, the system then does not come down. There is clearly a tension. I am sure that many CEOs know that, in their hospital trusts at some point, there are unsafe services. They know they do not have enough clinical staff. The penalty for admitting it, however, is to have regulatory intervention and managerial intervention from above which basically says, “You get on with it. We are much more concerned about finance and throughput”. Unless we are realistic about why senior management does not encourage whistleblowers, the reality is that any of these kinds of initiatives will not be effective in the end.