McMullen, Jeremy --- "Ten Years of Employment Protection for Whistleblowers in the UK: A View from the Employment Appeal Tribunal" [2010] ELECD 542; in Lewis, B. David (ed), "A Global Approach to Public Interest Disclosure" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: A Global Approach to Public Interest Disclosure

Editor(s): Lewis, B. David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448995

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Ten Years of Employment Protection for Whistleblowers in the UK: A View from the Employment Appeal Tribunal

Author(s): McMullen, Jeremy

Number of pages: 8

Extract:

2. Ten years of employment protection
for whistleblowers in the UK:
a view from the Employment
Appeal Tribunal
His Honour Judge Jeremy McMullen QC1

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) offices in both London and
Edinburgh provide us with a constantly changing view of people at work.
What follows is a reflection from these vantage points on some of the
important issues raised by the introduction of public interest disclosure
law in the UK. I will concentrate on practice at the expense of black letter
exegesis which can be found elsewhere (see Bowers et al., 2007; Lewis,
2008).
In terms of context, there have been more and more Employment
Tribunal and EAT hearings on a trio of statutory measures which
deal with the disclosure and non-disclosure of information, namely the
Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998 and
the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The number of cases brought to
employment tribunals in Great Britain in 2006­07 rose by 15 per cent,
from 115 039 in 2005­06 to 132 577. The total number of complaints
`accepted' increased by 18 per cent to 238 546. A single claim can include
complaints relating to a number of jurisdictions so the number is roughly
two for one. The number of cases disposed of during 2006­07 also rose, by
19 per cent, from 86 083 to 102 597. There was an increase of 26 per cent in
multiple cases and a 3 per cent rise in single cases ...