My Lords, I must confess to being rather puzzled by some of the detail in Amendment 120 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. When I got to proposed new subsection (4), I assumed that the office was intended to be a regulatory body ensuring that the whistleblowing arrangements with regard to national security were appropriate; however, it subsequently became clear in proposed new paragraph (b) that it was intended to be the whistle- blowing channel. Those seems like slightly different roles to me.
I am also puzzled as to why there is a proposal here for a whistleblowing channel that is in fact very narrow. It relates only
“to the commission of an offence under this Act”.
I would have thought that, if there was a need for a whistleblowing channel—