My Lords, I strongly support the amendment and hope that I will be worthy of the kind remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, in referring to my support a few moments ago.
I cannot muster the same forensic analysis as the noble Lord has treated us to, but in my view, the matter is simple. If we leave the good faith test in the Act and add to it the public interest test, which the Government want to add to the legislation, we shall simply be doubling the hurdles that the whistleblower has to clear. When Parliament passed the Public Interest Disclosure Act, it did not insert a public interest test in the legislation. Good faith was seen as the appropriate safeguard, and Dame Janet Smith in her report on the Shipman inquiry commented that it would perhaps make sense if the good faith test were replaced by a public interest test. The Government are acceding to that suggestion but they are leaving in the good faith test. I submit that with this new public interest test inserted in Clause 15, whistleblowers would need to show both that they had the reasonable belief that their disclosure was made in the public interest, and that, with the good faith test, their predominant motive for making a disclosure was in the public interest. That creates an additional hurdle for the whistleblower to clear and a requirement to satisfy a sort of double public interest test.
Removing the requirement of good faith, as proposed in the amendment would simply restore the law to its former balance as between the whistleblower and the organisation, and refrains from imposing additional tests on the whistleblower. Retaining the two tests would unnecessarily complicate the law requiring the whistleblower to satisfy different tests with different
standards: in the one case reasonable belief; and in the other, that there is no ulterior motive. So the amendment would simplify the law, which is in danger of becoming overcomplicated, and clarify and simplify the protection for whistleblowers. I urge the Committee to accept it.