Whitehall frauds
whistleblowing saves £2.5 million a year


15 June 2004

Whitehall must do more to promote whistleblowing if it is to crack down on the fraud and wrongdoing that is undermining public confidence in government, the Committee on Standards in Public Life1 will hear today, Tuesday June 15th.

According to Public Concern at Work2, Treasury statistics show there has been a 30% increase in the numbers of Whitehall frauds stopped by whistleblowers since the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) came into force. (Case summaries available). While the charity estimates that the new law is helping stop over £2.5 million a year of civil service frauds that evade normal controls, it says much more could be saved if whistleblowing was better promoted.

Public Concern at Work is calling on Whitehall and all public bodies

  • to display posters telling staff how they can by-pass line management or, if top managers are behaving improperly, go outside the organisation; and
  • to review whistleblowing arrangements to check they are deterring fraud and wrongdoing.

With surveys from the Audit Commission and UNISON showing staff awareness of whistleblowing law and policy in the NHS and local government is around 50%, Public Concern at Work says levels are lower in Whitehall. Its director, Guy Dehn, says “Unless government starts promoting whistleblowing, we have no chance of tackling workplace cultures that have become corrupted, compromised or cynical”.

Immigration fiasco
Public Concern at Work maintains that if the Home Office had used whistleblowing as a governance tool - as leading companies now do under the Combined Code - it would have avoided the recent fiasco that led to a collapse in public confidence in the UK’s immigration service and a ministerial resignation.

The charity maintains that the troubling issue is not why two officials went public after their internal whistleblowing was ignored, but why so many of their colleagues and managers turned a blind eye to secret policies, forged documents and bogus applications.

“Whistleblowing works”
Public Concern at Work joins a number of leading authorities, including the Audit Commission and the Standards Board, who are telling the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the new approach to whistleblowing is helping public bodies tackle malpractice. While the charity acknowledges that whistleblowing is helping to make public bodies more open and accountable, it is clear that the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) is only one of a number of factors behind this welcome trend.

Mr Dehn says wide support for the legislation remains across all sectors because “by offering real protection to workers who act in the public interest, the law gives valuable help to organisations on how to be open and accountable. By rejecting the tick-box approach and regulatory overkill, the law gets people to think.” However, Public Concern at Work’s evidence makes clear that whistleblowing can only have a positive impact for an organisation if it is promoted and embraced by those at the top.

Scotland 0 - Wales 1
On the negative side, Public Concern at Work says that Scotland is years behind the rest of the country in its approach to whistleblowing. The Scottish Executive - in contrast to the Welsh Assembly and most English local authorities - has failed to provide any evidence or comment to the Committee on Standards in Public Life on whistleblowing.

“For the country that suffered Piper Alpha and Dunblane and is now paying through the nose for its new Parliament building,” says Mr Dehn “we had imagined the Scottish Executive would have been much keener to use whistleblowing as a means to break from the cultures of fear, anonymity and petty loyalty that isolates people and undermines social cohesion.” The charity says things should improve north of the border following a recent campaign by Audit Scotland to promote whistleblowing to staff and managers in public bodies and acknowledgement that whistleblowing must be encouraged to stop abuse in the care sector.

NHS - “condition improving”
The charity says that the Government has made significant progress in breaking the climate of fear and secrecy that overshadowed the NHS in the 1980s and 90s. While those decades were scarred by NHS whistleblowers who lost their jobs for speaking out about patient safety and by the scandals where staff concerns were not raised, Public Concern at Work points out that there has been no new scandal and no PIDA cases from the NHS about major patient safety issues. Its evidence quotes a recent UNISON survey that one in two NHS staff believed that their Trust would want them to blow the whistle on a major problem even it caused the Trust negative publicity.

Links
Public Concern at Work’s Submission to the Committee on Standards in Public Life

Addendum on effect of the Public Interest Disclosure Act on Public Sector Culture

Some of the Whitehall frauds stopped by whistleblowing

  • The Committee on Standards in Public Life (now chaired by Sir Alistair Graham) is taking evidence at 1 Great George Street, London SW1 as part of its Inquiry on “Getting the Balance Right” which is reviewing its key recommendations over the past 10 years. This will review how whistleblowing is working in the public sector, what is best practice and look at the evidence that the Public Interest Disclosure Act is making public bodies more open and accountable.
  • Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowing charity, runs a free helpline (020 7404 6609), provides consultancy and training to organisations, lobbies on public policy and promotes whistleblowing in the UK and overseas. It receives no grant in aid from Government.