Court of Appeal | Legal bid to give all job applicants vital whistleblowing protections

A case at the Court of Appeal is considering whether all external job applicants should have whistleblowing legal protection.

Currently, the scope of whistleblowing law does not include people applying for a job, other than job applicants to the NHS who are legally protected by the Employment Rights Act 1996 (“ERA 1996”) if they make a protected disclosure.

Other workers, such as people doing work experience or agency workers, are also protected. Because of the lack of legal protections, job applicants who blow the whistle in other sectors risk being blacklisted and can be effectively excluded from the ability to work in their chosen field again.

The blacklisting of whistleblowers is all too frequent; many potential employers are put off by the knowledge that a particular candidate has reported wrongdoing with a previous employer.