We need to protect whistleblowers outside the NHS too | Andrew Smith

The toothless Francis review fails whistleblowers like the HSBC’s Hervé Falciani. The real problem is the management culture in our leading industries

In Freedom to Speak Up, the report on the plight of NHS whistleblowers published this week, Sir Robert Francis interviewed 612 victims, many of whom I know had high hopes. But his recommendations have turned out to be toothless and probably ineffectual.

Why do I say this? Because the often shocking travails of whistleblowers are distributed well beyond the NHS, across all industries. What’s more, and this is key, their experiences are universally, uncannily similar in all contexts – from the NHS cardiologist Dr Raj Mattu and Bupa care worker Eileen Chubb to the HSBC whistleblower Hervé Falciani – who, after bravely revealing industrial-scale wrongdoing at the bank, found the authorities investigating him.

Related: The HSBC files: what we know so far

Instead of acting to examine or remedy the situation, management now works to marginalise the messenger

What many firms did was ‘incentivise' top management and key staff with share options and target-related bonuses

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