WhistleblowersUK supports calls for an Office of the Whistleblower as set out in the draft Bill. We know there is some confusion and some deliberate misrepresentation about what the Bill actually proposes. This page separates FACT from FICTION.
What is the Office of the Whistleblower Bill?
The Office of the Whistleblower Bill is a Private Member’s Bill last introduced in the House of Commons in December 2024 by Labour MP Gareth Snell. It has previously been introduced by Baroness Kramer and former Conservative MP Mary Robinson. The Bill was drafted by the legal panel at WhistleblowersUK supported by leading experts from around the world. This Bill addresses key failures identified within the existing Whistleblowing Framework and starts with defining whistleblowing and who is a whistleblower in Law. It also proposes to establish an independent Office of the Whistleblower (OWB) to champion whistleblowing with statutory duties including to:
- Set, monitor and enforce standards for how organisations handle whistleblowing cases
- Provide disclosure and advice services to whistleblowers
- Direct whistleblowing investigations
- Order redress for whistleblowers who have suffered detriment
- Create criminal offences for retaliating against whistleblowers
- Identify patterns across disclosures to surface systemic issues and serious risks at the earliest possible stage
The Bill creates a safety net for every citizen and will put an end to the fear and futility currently associated with whistleblowing.
How would the Office of the Whistleblower be funded?
The Bill proposes that the Office would be funded through fines levied on organisations that fail to meet whistleblowing standards. Independent regulators in the UK operate at arm’s length from the government with their own funding streams. The Information Commissioner’s Office, for example, is primarily funded by data protection fees, with fine income going to the Treasury rather than retained by the ICO. The principle that a regulator should be independently funded without profiting from enforcement is the same.
This ensures there is no conflict of interest: the OWB is funded to carry out its statutory functions and any excess will return to HM Treasury for public services.
Isn’t this just a first draft? Won’t it change?
Yes, this Bill sets out a proposal and that is how the parliamentary process works.
All Bills must go through multiple readings, committee scrutiny, amendments and reporting before becoming law upon Royal Assent. The OWB Bill will be examined, challenged, and refined by MPs, Lords, legal experts, and civil society. WhistleblowersUK welcomes that scrutiny and will continue to engage constructively with the parliamentary process as it develops.
Why does the UK need this Bill?
The current legal framework, the Employment Rights Act 1996 as amended by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 is widely recognised to be unfit for purpose. Among its failings:
- It applies only to certain categories of people defined as workers. Others have no protection.
- It turns concerns about safety, fraud or any other wrongdoing into an employment dispute.
- It rarely leads to any actual investigation by the appropriate authorities of the wrongdoing itself.
- The burden of proof is on the whistleblower to show that the detriments complained of arose from whistleblowing.
- It offers no proactive protection from retaliation, only redress after harm has occurred.
- Enforcement is slow, expensive, and inaccessible to most whistleblowers.
- There is no independent body to oversee and properly handle disclosures.
- The Employment Tribunal has no power to take action to protect the public from harm.
The result is that whistleblowers in the UK are always at risk of retaliation, and the wider Public Interest is not being protected, leaving us all at risk of harm.
Does the Bill address the imbalance between whistleblowers and powerful organisations?
Yes.
This is one of the most important problems that the Bill solves. Under the current framework, a whistleblower who has suffered retaliation must bring an Employment Tribunal claim against their employer facing a legal team funded by the organisation they are challenging, bearing the costs and stress of litigation personally, waiting years for a hearing, and with no guarantee of any action being taken on the underlying wrongdoing. The Office of the Whistleblower changes this fundamentally. Restitution is arbitrated by the OWB, not litigated between unequal parties. The Employment Tribunal remains an alternative option, but whistleblowers will no longer be forced into a David v Goliath battle as their only route to justice.
How does the OWB work alongside existing regulators?
The OWB is designed to complement, not replace, existing regulatory frameworks. Where a relevant regulator already exists such as the Financial Conduct Authority, the Care Quality Commission, or the Health and Safety Executive, the OWB can refer disclosures to that regulator and monitor action taken. Where no appropriate regulator exists, or where a disclosure falls under the remit of multiple regulators, the OWB can investigate directly. This closes a critical gap in the current system, where whistleblowers are often passed between bodies with no single point of accountability and no obligation on any regulator to act.
Does WhistleblowersUK financially benefit from the Bill?
No.
WhistleblowersUK is a not-for-profit organisation. We do not receive funding from the Bill’s passage and have no financial interest in its outcome. Our interest is in better protection for whistleblowers and the public interest which is why we were founded and what we exist to do.
Does the Bill introduce a US-style bounty or rewards scheme?
No.
The Bill contains no provision for financial rewards or bounties paid to whistleblowers for reporting wrongdoing. This is a fundamental difference from the US model, where whistleblowers can receive a percentage of financial penalties levied.
What the Bill does propose is a system to provide restitution where whistleblowers have been subjected to retaliation as a direct result of whistleblowing. We envisage that restitution will follow the same formula as personal injury claims but arbitrated by the OWB and a no cost environment for Whistleblowers.
Note – The Employment Tribunal will remain an alternative option.
We know from our work that people speak up in the interest of justice and the public interest not financial incentivisation.
Is there a separate debate about rewards schemes in the UK?
Yes, and it is entirely separate from the OWB Bill.
HMRC relaunched its long standing Reward Scheme in April 2026 as part of the Government’s anti-fraud strategy. In order to incentivise more informants to come forward, it has increased the amount of its discretionary rewards to between 10-30% of recoveries in excess of £1m. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) incentive scheme offers financial rewards of up to £250,000 to individuals who provide actionable inside information about illegal cartel activity and the Serious Fraud Office and Financial Conduct Authority have come out in support of rewards as an incentive to informers, although no scheme currently exists.
These schemes are not whistleblower reward schemes and are distinct from the OWB Bill which contains no such proposal, leaving this and other decisions to the Office of the Whistleblower.
WhistleblowersUK engages internationally with whistleblowing organisations, legal experts, and those who support whistleblowers across jurisdictions. The private sector is increasingly globalised — particularly given the rapid pace of technological change — and understanding how other countries approach whistleblowing, including reward-based models, is important to ensure our thinking is joined up. As the organisation that drafted the Bill, we could have included a rewards scheme had we chosen to. We did not. Whether rewards have a role in the UK framework is a question for Parliament to consider through the legislative process — it is not something WhistleblowersUK is explicitly proposing.
Where can I read the Bill itself?
The full text of the Bill is publicly available on this link:
https://wbuk.org/the-whistleblowing-bill/ and our website as proposals are updated
Last updated: May 2026 | For further information or help contact: secretary@wbuk.org
