Contribution
My Lords, we have a very large number of amendments in front of us today, most of them from my noble friend Lady Kramer, who makes a strong case to include whistleblowing in detail in this Bill. I am very pleased to hear from the Minister that there is a consultation out on whistleblowing. From these Benches, we absolutely agree with the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that we want no delays in implementation. Without whistleblowing being part of the Bill, it is quite clear that things will not change—we have heard the concerns of other noble Lords about that.
I want to go back briefly to something that I mentioned at Second Reading. My noble friend Lady Kramer referred to PIDA, or the Public Interest Disclosure Act. When that went through your Lordships’ House in 1998, it amended the Employment Rights Act 1996, in which there had been substantial debate about the responsibilities of employees as well as employment rights. However, it clearly failed on anything to do with whistleblowing, which is why the entirety of the short Bill that became PIDA was to amend the previous Employment Rights Act.
Why do I raise that? It is because it is still not working. Even the Employment Rights Act that this House debated last year does not include effective whistleblowing terms. While we are discussing it in the context of the duty of candour, it is actually a much wider problem in the country. It is right that this is our focus, but we must not forget that this country fails at whistleblowing. I was very grateful to my noble friend Lady Kramer for giving us the illustration of what has happened in America since it introduced whistleblowing structures and authorities to make things work.
I completely agree with my noble friend Lady Featherstone’s Amendment 50, which I have signed. An important thing when I was health spokesperson for the party in 2020 to 2023 was the number of very serious incidents inside the NHS. By that time, the NHS had had a duty of candour for clinical professionals for four years, which clearly worked in some parts but not in others. I am very grateful to the CQC for meeting me to discuss examples of where it has worked and where it has not. I will come back in later discussions on this Bill to where the CQC thinks it works, but it is important to note that even the regulator talks about poor leadership and a lack of transparency becoming a culture that does not allow whistleblowing.
I want briefly to cite a case reported by the British Medical Journal on 26 May 2023 where a senior consultant, obstetrician and gynaecologist was dismissed. After raising patient safety concerns, he was sacked for whistleblowing. Apparently, he was electrocuted by a piece of equipment at work; he reported it and nothing happened. Next time he used it, he was electrocuted again. He reported it again, and things built up until suddenly he became the problem and not the equipment. As a result, a group of more than 1,000 doctors and others supported him, recognising that he was a whistleblower. To this day, his health trust says that he was not sacked for whistleblowing. That is probably true, but everybody knows that his actions were behind that outcome. I have seen this with other consultants, and it is a real problem for the NHS. It is one reason that I am glad that we will be amending the duty of candour for the NHS later in the Bill.
Protect, the leading whistleblower charity, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, mentioned, is really important as well, through its advice line, which tackles whistleblowing in every part of the country; that returns to the issue I was raising about the Employment Rights Act.
From these Benches, we absolutely welcome the consultation that has been published today. We urge the Government not just speedily to conclude the consultation and the response to it but to take very serious consideration of the amendments in this group, particularly those from my noble friend Lady Kramer. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.