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We have an expert team of employment lawyers who assist people who have been treated less favourably because they have ‘blown the whistle’ at work. Contact us today to see whether you have a claim against your current or former employer.

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‘Leigh Day are without doubt the most important employee firm. The impact the team has had upon modern employment litigation is unrivalled.’"

Legal 500 2021

Whistleblowing is where a worker discloses information which the worker reasonably believes tends to show a wrongdoing has been committed, is being committed, or may be committed.

‘Wrongdoing’ includes crimes, miscarriages of justice, a failure to comply with legal obligations, risks to health and safety, damage to the environment, and the covering up of any of these acts. 

The worker will be protected from being placed at a disadvantage, including being dismissed, if they made this disclosure of information because they reasonably believed it was in the public interest to do so (although that does not have to be their principal motive for making the disclosure).

What this broadly means is that a wrongdoing which only affects one person, where the interests of others are not affected, is unlikely to be in the public interest. Whether the disclosure of information is the cause of the disadvantage or dismissal will come down to the employer’s motivation.

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For a dismissal to be unlawful, the disclosure of information must be the core or real reason that the employer dismissed the worker. For any other disadvantage to be unlawful, the disclosure of information must have had a material influence on the employer when it subjected the worker to that particular treatment. 

Examples of whistleblowing include:

  • Raising concerns over the lawfulness of a tendering process, including reference to breaching contractual obligations 
  • Raising concerns with regard to patient safety in the NHS
  • Raising concerns about regulatory breaches and fraud

Our whistleblowing expertise

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GCHQ Whistleblowing Employment

Civil servant issues landmark whistleblowing claim following accusations in media against Boris Johnson and Simon Case

A civil servant who was dismissed after publicly accusing the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and those around him of lying to the public and criticising the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case over the handling of allegations relating to Chris Pincher has launched an employment tribunal claim against his government employers including GCHQ.

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EY drops appeal in Dubai whistleblowing case

The professional services firm EY has dropped its appeal in the case brought against the firm by whistleblower and former EY partner, Amjad Rihan.

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​Former EY partner awarded $10.8m in damages in legal case against the global accountancy firm

The High Court has today ruled that EY repeatedly breached the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants at the highest levels of management during an audit of a leading Dubai Gold refiner.