By Nikki Adebiyi, Founder, Bounce Black

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This week, the UK’s Whistleblower Awareness Week, years of advocacy and sacrifice culminated in a series of long-awaited developments in Westminster.

As the Week draws to a close, here’s an overview of some of the key developments and key concerns for whistleblowers in the UK:

About Whistleblowers Awareness Week

Led by the nonprofit advocacy and support organisation WhistleblowersUK, Whistleblowers Awareness Week this year is based on the theme of “the Age of the Whistleblower“.

The theme is a nod to the perceived increase in public appetite for justice and transparency, especially post- #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, and other hashtag activism movements.

Gen Z-ers are especially thought to be outspoken in ways that previous generations haven’t been. As a Zillennial, I can certainly say that I have been shaped by this tendency (even though I draw great inspiration from the Civil Rights era).

What Happened This Week?

Some of the interesting developments that happened this week include:

• A Westminster Hall debate led by Lloyd Hatton, MP for South Dorset, focused attention on the urgent need for better protections for whistleblowers across the UK. MPs from across parties voiced their support for those who risk careers and wellbeing to call out wrongdoing. Transcript available here.
• Amendments were tabled to the Employment Rights Bill, strengthening the rights of workers who speak up, including a new ban on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) being used to silence victims of harassment and discrimination.

This breakthrough is summed up well by Zelda Perkins, former assistant to disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein, in The Guardian’s anti-NDA coverage:

“Above all though, this victory belongs to the people who broke their NDAs, who risked everything to speak the truth when they were told they couldn’t. Without their courage, none of this would be happening.”

A victory indeed.

Combined with the prospect of the creation of an Office of the Whistleblower, and the introduction of fines for employers and individuals who retaliate against whistleblowers, this Bill appears promising. At least, with respect to centralising oversight, support, and some degree of accountability.

However…

Let’s Be Very Clear: This Is Not the End of the Battle

Not even remotely. Knowing what I know about covert retaliation tactics—both from personal experience and from the countless whistleblowers who email me their stories each week—I predict this will only drive intimidation further underground.

We know that Harvey Weinstein himself hired the private intelligence firm Black Cube to surveil and intimidate his accusers, as is the practice of others who seek to eliminate any risks of exposure.

This is not a distant or rare phenomenon. This is the high-cost, high-power machinery readily available to those who want to make a whistleblower disappear without leaving a trace.

Those who have the means, power, and connections to make someone’s life hell in retaliation for speaking out will continue to do so—just more quietly, more insidiously.

That means this legislative change, while important, is incomplete without further measures to hold perpetrators of covert organised harassment and retaliation to account.

The Limitations of Financial Penalties

Fines alone are not enough. If a corporation can write off a penalty as a cost of doing business while continuing to destroy the lives of whistleblowers behind closed doors, the system is still broken.

Genuine attempts at accountability and safeguarding must have teeth, and given what’s at stake in terms of lives and livelihoods, they have to be very sharp. They must:

• Dismantle the networks that facilitate covert retaliation: this includes private intelligence agencies, corrupt police and intelligence teams, and others green-lighting and perpetrating this heinous social sin
• Criminalise and prosecute organised harassment efforts: there have to be disincentives for participating in the coordinated and intentional destruction of lives
• Offer legal, psychological, and material support to whistleblowers over the long term.

Shifting the System, Not Just Bandaging the Wounds

It is good that we are starting to shift away from merely pulling people out of the proverbial river, as the Desmond Tutu saying goes.

But unless stronger measures are put in place to protect the public from the systematic abuse of power by public and private intelligence entities, the core problem will only shift higher upstream.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This week was a turning point, but only if we keep turning and continue to do the needful. We must now push:

• For criminal sanctions on covert retaliation.
• For full protection of whistleblowers’ identities and wellbeing.
• For serious investment in independent oversight bodies.
• For a cultural shift where speaking truth is seen as service, not sabotage.

To all whistleblowers—past, present and future—who have dared to speak truth to power: thank you.

We are not the problem. We never have been.

We are the public servants that history will ultimately vindicate.

For now, we are the forerunners of the judgement and integrity to come.

Here’s to us this week and always.

Keep going!