Wickham's musings from Chalke

Whistleblowers have been much in the news over the last few years, often working in government departments and exposing wrongdoing there.

One recent example was a man who said employees had been told to short-circuit immigration checks on people coming from east European countries and to let them all in so that the backlog of applications that was an embarrassment to the government could be reduced.

Advice for potential whistleblowers is to discuss the matter with superiors to see whether it can be resolved without becoming public. This won’t work of course if the superiors are guilty of something.

It would seem that a whistleblower should ensure that something is illegal before going public, possibly getting confidential advice from a solicitor first. Whistleblowing when something might happen or relating to something that is not illegal is risky for the whistleblower as his job would probably be at risk and he could not justify his action so easily.