My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has taken part in this short debate and for the support I have had from all sides of the Committee. I am also very grateful to the noble Baroness. As she suspected, I am not particularly happy with the response; nevertheless, there were a few little glimmers of light, for which I am truly grateful.
I am baffled by the Government’s continued resistance to these points. I understand that it is not just a matter for the Department for Education; I have raised this issue on other occasions in relation to other departments. For some reason, the Government are digging in on this matter and I really do not understand why. I do not understand their resistance to a statutory code of conduct. As I said, it is important that it is placed in the Bill because that would send a very powerful signal to all these organisations that Parliament takes this issue very seriously. Guidance is all very well but, as we know, all too often in many spheres of public life it goes by the wayside in the face of all the other pressures on public organisations. A statutory code of conduct is qualitatively different and, frankly, I do not understand why the Government continue to resist it.
Nor do I understand why they are taking so long to rectify the anomaly in protecting job applicants. This was raised in previous debates and the Government dug in very resolutely, in the way that the noble Baroness has done, until the Francis report arrived. When that report said that many of the tragedies that took place in Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust could have been prevented if there had been a proper culture of whistleblowing, the Government immediately switched round and provided protection for NHS workers. I know that the noble Baroness is doing her best with the briefing that she has been given; nevertheless, she has still not produced any good reason why workers in the NHS should be protected, yet workers in equally sensitive and equally important areas of public service—all the areas covered by the Bill—are not. The signal that the Government are sending out, and I cannot understand why they want to go on doing so, is that somehow these matters are less important than the matters covered by the NHS. Clearly, that is not the case.
When the noble Baroness calls for evidence, almost by definition it will come only after a tragedy such as happened in Mid Staffordshire has occurred. I ask the question that I have asked other Ministers: do they really want to be on the record as denying an opportunity to put right this anomaly, only for some distinguished person at a public inquiry following a terrible tragedy—sadly, there almost certainly will be such a tragedy at some point in the future—to look at it all and say, “If only there had been a culture to encourage whistleblowing and transparency, we might have prevented some of these terrible circumstances”? Why do Ministers still resolutely turn their face against this?
The glimmers of light that the noble Baroness has produced today are a tiny, tiny step forward from the previous response that I have had from Ministers, so I am grateful for her commitment to continue to look at this issue. However, I urge her and all Ministers to take this more seriously and not to wait for another disaster and then to be forced into taking action, just as the Francis report forced the Government to take action after the Mid Staffordshire incident. Having said all that, I may try again in the future but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.