Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Tessa Munt Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

To reassure my hon. Friend, the House, the families and all others affected by such scandals, these are clauses in a Bill that will soon be sections in a piece of legislation, but they are more than that: they change the nature of the relationship between the state and its duties to its people. That is so important. Yes, this Bill is the legal architecture, but something much bigger than this has to be put in place.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

rose—

[Maria Eagle (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)]

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention, then I will come to my right hon. Friend.

[Tessa Munt]

I welcome this Bill. Will the Prime Minister reassure me and my constituents that organisations that are contractors for public authorities and public bodies will also be covered the provisions of the Bill? It is important that where responsibilities are deferred to other bodies, they too are captured by the clauses in this Bill.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady anticipates my next point, which I will make before taking an intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle). We have to recognise that in some scandals, such as the Post Office Horizon scandal, the boundaries between the public sector and the private sector are complicated. In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, clause 4 of this Bill applies the duty to some private bodies, particularly those delivering public functions and those with relevant health and safety responsibilities, as well as relevant public sector contractors—in the Post Office case, Fujitsu—for that very reason. We have to recognise that the boundaries are blurred, and we need to make sure that the duty extends appropriately.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

May I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and particularly to my role as vice-chair of WhistleblowersUK, a not-for-profit organisation?

The Bill places new obligations of transparency and frankness on public authorities and officials, leaving them nowhere to hide from public scrutiny of their actions. I absolutely applaud those aims. We have been offered the opportunity to strengthen the Bill, and I have a contribution to make that stems from more than a decade of listening to whistleblowers. The UK has no proper law on whistleblowing or for protecting whistleblowers. Section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which was introduced by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, gives a measure of protection from detriments to workers and employees who make what are termed “public interest disclosures”. However, that provision treats such detriments as essentially employment matters; it does not once use the words “whistleblowing” or “whistleblower” and does not extend beyond workers and employees. It is highly technical, puts all sorts of barriers and difficulties in the way of workers and employees who make public interest disclosures, focuses exclusively on the employment context, and rarely—if ever—leads to any wider investigation of the substantive matters about which the worker or employee makes a disclosure.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill misses an opportunity: it could and should have recognised the important role played by whistleblowers in ensuring accountability. The whistleblower is, or should be, the best friend of every chief executive officer, every board, and every Minister. Whistleblowers want to see an end to crime, corruption and cover-up; they do not want to be fired for raising their concerns. Almost everyone will recognise the major scandals in which whistleblowers have reported what was happening again and again but have not been believed or, worse, have been invited or forced to leave their role. The case against whistleblowers is all about protection of reputation and the imbalance of power, and I recognise entirely what the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) said.

Explicit recognition was given to the role of whistleblowers in the ten-minute rule Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) on 9 July 2025, with the support of the Hillsborough victims. Clauses 2, 5(1) and 9 in that Bill would have been of huge significance in advancing the protection of whistleblowers. For the first time in legislation, the Bill gave explicit recognition to whistleblowing—a word which had hitherto not featured in the legislative lexicon. The ten-minute rule Bill sought to extend the concept of public interest disclosures beyond employment law; it would have extended whistleblower protection to all who blow the whistle, many of whom will be outside the scope of employment law. If that Bill had proceeded, whistleblowing as a legal concept would have broken out of the confines of employment law.

Clause 9 of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill requires public authorities to publish codes of ethics. It would be easy for the Government to take into their Bill the provision from the earlier Bill requiring public authority codes of ethics to recognise the need to protect whistleblowers. It is deeply disappointing and unfortunate that it does not, and I ask the Minister to address that point and amend the Bill in her mission to strengthen it. If that were to happen, it would be a start, but further reform would still be needed. First, the provision would apply only when the potential wrongdoer was a public authority within the scope of the Bill. Secondly, such protection as would be given would arise only indirectly through the existence of a code of ethics. Thirdly, the Bill would lack teeth to deal with breaches of the code of ethics. Fourthly, there would still be no mechanism for investigating and following up the wrongdoing that a whistleblower might have uncovered.

There remains an urgent need to set up the office of the whistleblower, and to extend the Bill’s scope to include contractors in the private sector—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. May I remind the hon. Lady of the scope of this Bill?

[Tessa Munt]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I sought to pick up on the Minister’s and Prime Minister’s intention of ensuring that the Bill is as strong as it can be.

The Bill should cover contractors in the private sector as well as the public sector, as was mentioned, if it is to have real teeth and ensure that wrongdoing is fully investigated and that wrongdoers are brought to account. Will the Minister meet me and whistleblowers to explore the scope of this Bill?