Chris Bloore

Thank you for chairing this debate, Sir Mark. I have learned a valuable lesson this afternoon: get in there early, because if you do not, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and for Congleton (Mrs Russell) will make all the points that you had planned to far more eloquently. I have cut some of my notes so my speech will be brief, but I reaffirm many of the recommendations that they made. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing this debate and for his chairmanship of the all-party group for whistleblowing. This is the right week to have this conversation, and I am glad that other Members have joined us. As someone who, in a previous life, was a councillor and represented a family affected by Hillsborough, I know all too well the damage that the lack of candour there sometimes is in public life can inflict on a family. I saw that family destroyed while fighting for justice. I now have the honour of representing a family deeply impacted by the Horizon scandal, and I have seen the damage that it has done to them. When whistleblowers speak out, it is so often the nature of organisations and institutions to look internally to protect themselves, instead of looking for the root cause of the problem. One of the problems I have noticed too often is the lack of confidence whistleblowers have about speaking out. My inbox is currently full of people—whether they are in the NHS or other public institutions—writing to put forward concerns about the level of services being provided to members of the public, but all too concerned about what will happen to their job prospects and their families if they do not have the protections to speak out. Too often, whistleblowers are our last line of defence when processes and institutions fail. Too many brave men and women, in seeking to protect the public, have been badly failed by the laws in place in this country. I share the confidence of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central in the Government’s commitment to addressing that imbalance and making sure that people feel that they have the protections to speak out. I hope that the Minister, in his response, will be able to reassure us that the Government remain committed to those pre-election pledges to ensure that people who are prepared to risk everything to protect the public and the public interest will have the confidence to do so, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because—as we have so often learned, including during our brief time in this Parliament—it costs us an awful lot of money as a country to redress those problems when we fail. I apologise for the slightly short nature of my speech, but I thank you for the opportunity to speak today, Sir Mark.