Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for leading this group. I know many of her amendments on whistleblowing bear similarities to those proposed by her on other matters in the last Session; in particular, she has previously proposed an office for the whistleblower, with, I note, 16 functions for that office. She will therefore be unsurprised to hear that we on these Benches are not able to support her on that proposal, but I hope we might be able to find more common ground in our debates on later groups. I do not propose to detain the Committee with a long response to the arguments that were made eloquently by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kramer and Lady Featherstone, and the noble Lord, Lord Wills. Of course, we agree that accountability is extremely important: if a serious concern is raised within a department, from whatever level of official or whatever part of the department, officials and Ministers ought to take that very seriously. Well-run departments should have mechanisms in place to assess their own performance and to put a stop to systemic failures and prevent future wrongdoing within their organisations. That appears to be self-evident. I hope that the Minister, when responding, will be able to set out some of the processes that exist within government to ensure that bad practice is brought to the attention of senior officials and Ministers in the proper way and, as we have heard, that timely, effective action is taken. That is, as I say, self-evident; what is not self-evident to me is the assertion that an entirely new whistleblowing process or office—with a panoply of powers and a profusion of minor potentates—is, in fact, needed to facilitate effective reporting of bad practice. If this matter is to go further, I would like to hear a little more from those noble Lords proposing these amendments on the projected cost of some of these proposals, and on the impact a new whistleblowing process would have on the ability of departments to resolve issues quickly when they arise, rather than finding themselves locked into formal investigatory processes which may delay quick and effective action. I would also suggest that the variety of approaches proposed by the amendments might indicate that there is a lack of clarity on the right approach; sometimes, a proliferation of proposed remedies indicates the absence of a clear diagnosis in the first place. With that, I look forward to the Minister’s response.