Whistleblowing and the Law: Protected Disclosures

Clarkslegal Law Bites

Whistleblowers are in the headlines following the Dyson report into the Panorama interview in 1995 with the Diana, Princess of Wales. Lord Dyson found that Martin Bashir had acted deceitfully in the way he obtained the interview with the Princess of Wales.

Since the publication of the report, press attention has also turned to how the BBC may have treated insiders who tried to expose Bashir’s methods. Today people who blow the whistle at work are protected from being dismissed or from suffering some other detriment.

In its response to the Dyson report the BBC said that since the Panorama interview it had introduced a whistleblowing policy in the late 1990s taking into account the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. The policy was re-launched in 2016 as part of its internal communications programme on ‘speaking up’

Today every employer, whatever their size, should have a whistleblowing policy and a named whistleblowing officer for workers to report to. Whilst few situations will reach the high drama of the Panorama interview virtually all employers will have to deal with whistleblowing issues at some point.

Deborah Scales, Employment Associate at Clarkslegal gives the first in a series on Whistleblowing and the law for employers. In this podcast Deborah discusses the legal definition of protected disclosure and what this means for employers.