Elizabeth Gardiner: 'Health and care workers should be free to speak out on PPE'

Summary

The coronavirus pandemic has sparked reports of NHS workers being warned, threatened or disciplined for speaking up about the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing for coronavirus and similar worries raised in the care sector. It underlines the need for a shift in attitudes in UK workplaces to whistleblowers, underpinned by an overhaul of the law to afford them greater protection, according to Elizabeth Gardiner, the new chief executive of the whistleblowing charity, Protect, in this blog in the Guardian.

"We’ve heard direct from some care sector workers who have been threatened with disciplinary aciton if they persist in raising concerns," says Elizabeth.

"Whistleblowers are a safety valve – it’s everyone’s business to reveal dangerous working practices."

“What we would like to see is a proactive duty on employers to protect whistleblowers from being victimised,” she says. “That would be the sort of cultural shift that we’re looking for.”