Yes, they were here earlier.
My preference would be to create an overarching office of the whistleblower covering all public and private activity, as I have proposed in my Private Member’s Bill. However, failing that, I suggest that much more immediate action could take place within the security and intelligence services.
Whistleblowers are essential in any and every field of activity. People err and power is abused, and whistle- blowing is both the best deterrent and often a necessary step to cure. But organisations so often welcome whistleblowers in their speeches, and perhaps in very general policy terms, but not in the practical reality.
I have to keep a good distance from sources because here in the House of Lords we do not have the power to protect their confidentiality. But over and again, the message comes that, in the security and intelligence services, various schemes—not all, but various and significant ones—are actually dysfunctional. Retaliation happens and is not exceptional, in the form of career destruction and the threat of the use of the Official Secrets Act—it may be entirely inappropriate, but it is a very frightening threat. Follow-up and proper investigation rarely happen. Instead, wagons are circled and retaliation begins.
In this, I have to say that the intelligence agencies are really no different from so many other parts of the public sector. We have to look only at the experience that the Metropolitan Police is currently going through to realise that there is a certain inbred complacency in many organisations. They are certain if you ask them that they have excellent processes in place, but then some event triggers and exposes problems that have lain underneath for a long time.
At Second Reading, I gave an example of a whistle- blower who spoke out using the existing systems to expose evidence that key equipment was being sourced from a hostile foreign power. That person is still suffering the price of a destroyed career.
Also at Second Reading, in explaining that he had worked with the intelligence community for more than 40 years, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts—I think quite unwittingly—gave another, even more serious illustration of the dysfunctional nature of the system. Referring to the earlier speech that day of the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, and his reminder that in regard to extraordinary rendition
“Britain appears to have been involved in at least 70 cases, according to the 2018 ISC report”,
the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts said,
“in my experience, the men and women of the intelligence community were profoundly shocked by the revelations of what had happened in those fraught months and years after 9/11.”—[Official Report, 6/12/22; cols. 137-39.]
I am sure that some people, including the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, were profoundly shocked, but with at least 70 cases, a significant number of people, including those at senior level, must have known, knew it was wrong and either decided or were persuaded to do nothing, because of misguided loyalty, a culture of cover-up and fear that retaliation would destroy their careers.
Speaking out is frightening, disloyalty being the least of the accusations that typically follow. Each person to pluck up the courage to speak out needs to know exactly who they can go to to speak safely and how they can initially do it—most of them wish to do so anonymously initially. They cannot turn for information or advice to a colleague, as that exposes who they are. They cannot go to a senior person, as that exposes who they are. They should never look on the intranet or internet because that is traceable. Even in the health services, nurses use burner phones to report wrong behaviour. A whistleblower has to be absolutely confident that the person they speak to has both the will and, even more importantly, the authority to follow up and investigate an act. That is what whistleblowers look for.
However, it is much more than that. Confidentiality, which is often seen as the greatest protection for a whistleblower, is almost impossible to sustain once an investigation process starts, because the issue and the information themselves direct anyone who is interested to the identity of the whistleblower. So it is absolutely crucial that any person or body that a whistleblower goes to can provide them with protection or, where things go wrong and there is retaliation, with redress.
9.30 pm
At both Second Reading and in earlier days in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for whom I have great respect, and the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, listed reams of people who a whistleblower could go to. Of course, they would have to identify who was the right responsible person, what they would and could do, and, even more importantly, they would have to have their confidential contact details.
Included in the list from those speeches were government departments’ internal policies and processes, but, as we heard earlier, even the Government know that many of these are unsafe and are looking to improve their guidance because they are very broad, general concerns, so that is not a terribly good answer. Otherwise named were: a staff counsellor; the external staff counsellor in the Cabinet Office; organisational ethics counsellors—they play an important role but they have limited authority, particularly to investigate, and they have no power of redress as far as I can understand; the chair of the ISC; the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office; the Attorney-General’s Office, the Director of Public Prosecutions; the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; with permission, the PUSS
to the Home Office; the National Security Adviser; the Cabinet Secretary; and the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The list itself underscores the fact that this is a farce.
As I said, junior people on that list have relatively little power to act and certainly none for redress. As for the senior names listed—those many senior and important names—I am sure there are some people in this Committee who have the personal, confidential and secure phone numbers for those people, such as the National Security Adviser, but I very much doubt that a mid-level intelligence agent or the junior clerk in a supply chain has that information. Whistleblowers are very often the little people and mid-level people, because they are the least institutionalised.
I am asking the Government to get to grips with this now, and to at least make sure that there is a single place where people can go to to speak out, and that every member of every related organisation has that confidential number and contact information. The office that they go to—it cannot just be an individual, as that is far too narrow—has to have the power to set whistleblowing policies, procedures and reporting structures that include confidentiality and anonymity, the power to investigate and, significantly, because confidentiality is so fragile and so impossible to enforce, the power to redress where a whistleblower suffers detriment. In that way, there would be a system to catch wrong behaviour early. I would like to see it open not just to employees and contractors but to anyone who has relevant information. That information, coming early and going to the right people so that there is guaranteed follow-up, means that misbehaviour and wrongdoing are stopped in their tracks early. There is no better protection for the public interest.