Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to promote whistleblowing in his Department and agencies.

Within the Department the following steps are being taken to promote whistleblowing:

- A ‘Values and Behaviours: Task and Finish Group’ has been established to review the culture within the Department, including reviewing online feedback and holding open discussion sessions with staff and trade unions;

- The Department’s Executive Committee has discussed whistleblowing, reviewed a number of whistleblowing cases and discussed how to encourage a culture where ‘speaking out’ is embraced and the views expressed informed the work of both the Task and Finish Group and Human Resources. Following this, the Department has expanded the role of the Speak-out Adviser (Nominated Officer in other Government Departments) to include signposting to Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination and Grievance Policies in order to help individuals navigate policies and provide a route independent of the line management chain should individuals wish to talk to someone else;

- A Communications/Engagement Strategy has been developed for whistleblowing, whereby senior officials will meet regularly with the Speak-out Advisors;

- The Department is designing a dedicated Speak-out Adviser webpage with links and resources for support to health and wellbeing, relevant Human Resources policies and sources of support, with messages from the whistleblowing Speak-out Champion which will go live mid-September 2017; and

- A number of Human Resources policies to clarify whistleblowing, grievance and bullying, harassment and discrimination process have also been updated by the Department.

Within Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) the following steps are being taken to promote whistleblowing:

- The agency has established a robust Nominated Officer Network which regularly meets to share best practice and increase whistleblowing awareness; and

- The agency regularly reviews their whistleblowing cases and works with key personnel to identify improvements. This has resulted in strengthening their whistleblowing policy and procedure in February 2016, accompanied by a team briefing to all staff in February 2016. The MHRA Whistleblowing Strategy includes a series of planned campaigns, training and activities to increase awareness, which is fully supported with intranet messages from their Whistleblowing Champion.

Within Public Health England (PHE) the following steps are being taken to promote whistleblowing:

- PHE have established a network of ‘Speak Out’ Advisors across the organisation to encourage staff to raise concerns and publicised a new policy through a poster campaign across the PHE estate and on the intranet;

- A direct channel to the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee has been established for staff to use if they do not feel confident raising concerns internally with the senior management team or if the concerns is about the senior management team;

- To further support staff and improve processes PHE have undertaken a focused piece of work in response to feedback in the 2016 Staff Survey on bullying and harassment; and

- PHE have an agreement that each and every case will be reported to the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee every quarter and that they will be kept updated on progress until case closure.