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Mr. Robathan: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Dr. Wright: I shall succumb to temptation and not give way.
Mr. Anthony Coombs: This is the longest peroration in history.
Dr. Wright: It is a culminating peroration; we are getting in sight of the end.
The end is this: there is a movement afoot towards more ethical business; there is also a movement afoot towards more information. These two movements together are capable of changing the corporate world. They are capable also of changing the public world. In this instance, culture and law, as in so many other instances, go hand in hand. If we had a law-abiding culture, we would not require laws. We require laws and cultures to move together.
Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest):
On St. David's day, I congratulate the hon. Member for Islwyn(Mr. Touhig) on introducing a valuable measure that should be considered in Committee. I congratulate him also on doing so with a quality that is not common to many Welshmen--succinctness. I say that as someone who is eligible to play for Wales. My grandfather was born in Bryn-mawr and my great-grandfather in Ebbw Vale. Recently, I found myself supporting the Welsh rather than the English at Twickenhan. The hon. Gentleman's presentation was excellent.
The longer I have listened to the debate, the more I have been convinced, especially by some of my hon. Friends--many of whom have come to the Chamber, rather like Mark Antony, to bury the Bill and not to praise it--that the Bill has merit. It strikes a balance in the need to protect against victimisation those who reveal substantial malpractice, so long as the malpractice can be proved to be against the public interest.
Although I rarely agree with the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett), I think that he put his finger on the key issue--as did the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright)--when he emphasised the great personal sacrifices that many people make when bringing to the public's attention examples of malpractice that are against the public interest. Those sacrifices can easily be overlooked. The term "whistleblower" has pejorative connotations, which often obscure the value of disclosure.
The Bill would protect confidentiality in both private and public organisations, and that is proper. As the hon. Member for Islwyn said, the Bill is not a nitpicker's charter. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Duncan Smith), for whom I have great respect--there goes his parliamentary career--say that he sees the Bill as a deregulatory measure. Unlike the legal frameworks that have been set up in other countries, especially in Australia and even the United States, the Bill is a spare measure in legislative terms. It would build on the existing law of confidentiality in a way that I would find helpful. That does not mean that I think that it should not be amended in Committee, but I am saying that it should be allowed to get to Committee to be amended.
It is rather a pity that such a measure is necessary, because, as many hon. Members have said, any good organisation, whether in the private or the public sector, listens to its staff, particularly to the people who are closest to the line of fire--to the coal face. Therefore, as
has been emphasised in the briefing on the Bill, it is not surprising that a significant number of private sector companies, such as Forte, Cadbury, BT and TSB, support it.
Although I had not heard it before, the story of Beth Lawson, mentioned by the hon. Member for Islwyn, was instructive. By doing what she did, she benefited the company in the longer term and saved it from penalties that would have been grossly against its interests.
Mr. Robathan:
This is my biggest concern. All these marvellous examples are given, but I do not see how the Bill would benefit such people one way or the other, because, in the case that my hon. Friend just mentioned, the young lady concerned--Beth Lawson--reported the issue and the company took action.
Mr. Coombs:
That is the obvious riposte to such an argument. The point is that the Bill represents certainty. It gives reassurance to those people and therefore makes it more likely that they will act in a way that will, in the longer term, be in the interests of the company for which they work.
It is a pity that such a measure is necessary. I agree--although I do not do so very often--with Christine Hancock of the Royal College of Nursing, who said in a Health Service Journal article in 1994 that, if such a measure were followed in practice, in the longer term, all whistleblowing would be made relatively unnecessary. Indeed, the parents of Carol Starkie--the doctor who misdiagnosed some 42 cancer cases at the Birmingham royal orthopaedic hospital before 1993, which no consultant detected and reported through official channels--live in my constituency. I believe and support the Department of Health--there should be a contractual obligation on consultants and doctors in the health service to report on their colleagues' performance, and not just a sign of good practice vis-a-vis the General Medical Council.
In broad terms, I am strongly in favour of the Bill, but I have one or two reservations about it. I do not say that like Mark Antony, because I support the principle of the Bill and would like to see it go to Committee. My first worry relates to clause 2.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) was right when he intervened during the speech of the hon. Member for Islwyn. Clause 2(1)(c) defines a protected disclosure as being one where somebody
I cannot see why the word "principally" should be necessary. If somebody is acting in the way that we have described, I do not believe that they should be going for any personal gain whatever.
Mr. Luff:
I think that my hon. Friend might be misguided. The word seems to be a useful safeguard, because the individual may obtain fees of some kind from a subsequent television interview, which was not the intention when he or she blew the whistle. That word safeguards against false allegations that might be made subsequently.
Mr. Coombs:
I disagree with my hon. Friend. If the subsection read, "has not made it for the purpose of obtaining payment or personal gain", it would cover the situation adequately.
My next point relates to clause 3. Several hon. Members have said that adverse treatment should be monitored, and they have discussed the extent to which, for example, failure to provide promotion could be identified as a reason for using the remedies in the Bill. My worry is that the provision may have a long tail. It could be many years after an event that people decide that they have not got promotion and that, therefore, they have been adversely treated. I suggest that there should be a time limit within which people can take action about adverse treatment and within which they are be protected by the Bill.
Under clause 7, if an agreement is made, confidentiality cannot be a condition of it. I can imagine the following situation. Somebody makes a disclosure on an internal basis and the company agrees to change its procedures to right the wrong. Under the Bill, that change of procedures would not be allowed to remain confidential. In other words, the person making the complaint could make it open, subsequent to the event. I do not see why that should be the case. If someone makes a complaint and has it resolved via the internal procedures, he or she should be required to ensure that the matter remains confidential. If not, the constructive climate about which we have been talking may not be possible.
I strongly agree with clause 6. It deals with the burden of proof for civil servants and changes the law so that the burden of proof is on the Government to show that it is necessary to make evidence confidential. I was extremely concerned when my right hon. Friend--I am sorry, I anticipate--
Mr. Robathan:
It is only a matter of time.
Mr. Coombs:
I anticipate. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby talked about his activities in the Army and said that what people did there was all right because they were only planning illegal actions and not actually carrying them out. Bully for them, frankly. The more my hon. Friend talked about that instance, the more he made the case for the protection that clause 6 offers.
Mr. Robathan:
My hon. Friend should understand that the plans we were making related to a time when we might have been moving towards general war. I am sure that he supports me in saying that it is better that some minor infringements of the law might have taken place than that we might have been disadvantaged in a general war, as we might once have had with the Soviet Union.
Mr. Coombs:
That is a very large question. I believe that overlooking illegalities would be more inclined to undermine parliamentary democracy, even in extremis--
"has not made it principally for the purpose of obtaining payment or personal gain".
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