My Lords, I have been very interested in the whole discussion on whistleblowing. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and his team for their input to our thinking in the past few weeks. It has shed light on a number of issues that we will deal with later in his amendments, which are well thought out and on which we are coming to a conclusion. I want all Peers to know how important we believe this matter to be and how important it is to get it right. We are all singing off the same hymn sheet and obviously want to protect the whistleblower, and that is very much part of what we want to do.
My concern is that the amendment would narrow the whistleblowing provision. Public interest is critical: that is the primary thing rather than breach of contract. The noble Lord, Lord Young, has thrown up a number of examples of breach of contract and we could counter with examples showing where it does not quite work. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, has just arrived because he is the one we have looked back to in coming forward with this. I wanted to look this up when we first embarked on this issue: at Second Reading on 11 May 1988—we were only children then—the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, had been honed to absolute perfection in the Public Interest Disclosure Act. I shall not read all of his speech but the following words are spot on. He said:
“As I hope I have made clear, this measure will encourage people to recognise and identify with the wider public interest and not just their own private position”.—[Official Report, 11/5/98; col. 891.]
I consider that in returning to contract people would identify with private position rather than the wider public interest. That is the seriousness of the threat. My view and that of the Government has not changed
since then—I have given only an extract from an excellent speech—and I believe that we should carry on on that basis. I hope that will encourage the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.