The UK government opened a whistleblowing consultation on 12 October that asks whether running a whistleblowing procedure should become a legal duty for employers. Responses close at 11.59pm on 8 January 2027, and the government says it will publish a formal response in 2027.
What the consultation covers
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade leads the consultation paper, working with the Serious Fraud Office and the Home Office. It reviews the whistleblowing framework in the Employment Rights Act 1996, which applies in England, Wales and Scotland and protects workers who report wrongdoing from dismissal and other detriment. Its chapters cover who is protected, the public interest test, the list of reportable wrongdoing, disclosure routes, employer policies, interim relief, how workers find the right regulator, and a proposed Serious Fraud Office reward scheme.
The foreword is signed by Jonathan Reynolds MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, and Kate Dearden MP, Minister of State for the Future of Work. They write: “This consultation represents the most comprehensive assessment of whistleblowing by the government since the introduction of PIDA.” PIDA is the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which put the framework into law.
The employer procedure question
Government guidance already encourages employers to have a whistleblowing policy and a procedure for handling reports, and to keep a whistleblower’s identity confidential. The paper states that these recommendations are not legal requirements. Apart from certain financial services firms, employers are not currently required to have a policy, protect confidentiality, investigate a disclosure or tell the worker what happened.
The paper cites a 2024 survey by Bloomsbury Square Employment Law in which 17% of workers said their employer had no whistleblowing procedures and 36% named confidentiality risk as the main reason they would not blow the whistle. It then sets out two options.
Option 1 is revised, more detailed guidance with no new legal burden. Option 2 is a statutory duty to have effective procedures and a policy explaining them, and to follow up on disclosures. For the second option the paper describes Ireland’s Protected Disclosures Act 2014, under which employers with 50 or more employees must run secure reporting channels, acknowledge a disclosure in writing within seven days, appoint an impartial designated person, follow up diligently and give the whistleblower feedback within three months. The paper also names the Financial Conduct Authority’s SYSC 18 rules as a less prescriptive model. If either option goes ahead, the government says it would work out the detail with a representative group of stakeholders.
Interim relief and the tribunal numbers
An employee who says they were dismissed for whistleblowing can apply to an Employment Tribunal for interim relief within seven days. A tribunal can then order reinstatement, re-engagement or continued pay until the case is decided. Some stakeholders told the government that seven days is too short and suggested 14. The paper cites a 2023 Personio survey of 350 UK employees in which 91 percent were concerned about retaliation against whistleblowers.
The paper also reports a change in volume. Employment Tribunals historically received around 20 interim relief applications a year across all claim types, and regional offices now receive around 20 a month, largely in whistleblowing cases. The paper says this increase may be linked to the growing use of artificial intelligence in preparing claims.
Other questions on the table
The government is not proposing to remove the public interest test, and asks whether it works and whether more guidance would help. It asks whether the list of reportable wrongdoing covers the risks of increasingly capable frontier AI models, or whether clearer guidance would do. A worker who reports to a regulator must also reasonably believe the information is “substantially true”, and the paper asks whether that higher bar deters reports.
More than 90 prescribed persons can receive disclosures, listed by organisation rather than by type of wrongdoing. The government’s initial view is that a new central whistleblowing body is unnecessary, and it asks whether an AI-assisted tool should help workers pick the right prescribed person, with clear disclaimers that it gives guidance rather than legal advice.
Chapter 11 is separate. It proposes a Serious Fraud Office scheme that would pay a share of a company’s financial penalty to people whose information leads to a corporate conviction or a deferred prosecution agreement. One example factor in the question on reward size is, for workers, compliance with the company’s internal reporting systems.
What it means for the HR leader
Nothing in the paper changes an employer’s obligations today. It sets out questions, and the answers will not be known until the 2027 response. Employers can still use the Irish model as a test of their own process. Check whether a report gets a written acknowledgment within seven days, whether a named impartial person owns each case, and whether the reporter hears back within three months.
The same check applies to the software that holds the reports. Case-management and HRIS tools often give HR business partners, managers and administrators wide read access, and a duty to protect a reporter’s identity would turn that access list into evidence. Ask the vendor who can see a flagged case and whether views are logged.
The paper lands in a busy year for UK employers. Our earlier pieces cover three UK employment rights changes due before 2027, the doubled tribunal claim window, and why HR records now work as the employer’s defense file. Employers and HR bodies that want a say on a statutory duty or a longer interim relief window can respond through the consultation survey before 8 January.
Source: UK Government, Whistleblowing consultation (12 October 2026 to 8 January 2027)
