It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for all the work that she does on the all-party group. As she rightly points out, I was formerly the co-chair with her on that group. We can sometimes move from a Back-Bench position where we speak about an issue that we feel strongly about, and then we can be put in a ministerial position that covers that brief, but I can reassure Members that I am as ambitious as ever to make sure we get the right reforms for whistleblowing. My hon. Friend had a reception, which I was pleased to attend. She has had a number of events this week, and I pay tribute to her for her work in drawing attention to the importance of whistleblowers for our society. Whistleblowers are clearly the eyes and ears of our organisations, in terms of potential wrongdoing. As my hon. Friend knows, I have had a number of experiences with constituents. Ian Foxley blew the whistle on GPT Special Project Management, and did an incredible job. Paul Moore blew the whistle at HBOS prior to its financial distress and collapse. Sally Masterton was the whistleblower of the HBOS Reading scandal, which took five years to reach court, where she was vindicated for her statements. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) referenced Danske Bank, and the £234 billion of money laundering. She is right to talk about some of the UK corporate vehicles used for that. We are working together on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill to tighten up the opportunities people have to use those vehicles. One of the biggest scandals in that case was Danske Bank allowing that to happen on its watch. Howard Wilkinson was the whistleblower; the £234 billion of Russian money washing through Danske Bank in Estonia resulted in a $2 billion fine from the US authorities. According to the statistics, 43% of economic crimes are highlighted by whistleblowers, but in my experience, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle stated, it is much higher than that. Every case of economic crime I have dealt with has come from a whistleblower, and I pay tribute to them. It is not just financial crime; my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) highlighted issues with the Met police, which might have been brought to light much sooner if people had felt more confident about the whistleblowing framework. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) talked about Winterbourne View; that also might have come to light much sooner, with people being brought to justice much sooner, if people had more confidence. It is right that we seek to more effectively protect and compensate whistleblowers for doing the right thing. It is excellent that we have so many top-quality parliamentarians in this debate who will throw their weight behind the campaign for change. I am keen to do so too. Our whistleblowing framework was introduced through the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. It was intended to build openness and trust in workplaces by ensuring that workers can hold their employers to account, and are then treated fairly. It provides a route for workers to make disclosures of wrongdoing, including criminal offences, the endangerment of health and safety, causing damage to the environment, a miscarriage of justice, or a breach of any legal obligation. Disclosures usually need to be made to the employer, a lawyer or a prescribed person. Workers who believe they have been dismissed or otherwise detrimentally treated for making a protected disclosure can make a claim to an employment tribunal, which can award unlimited compensation. Workers are often the first people to witness any type of wrongdoing within an organisation. Information that workers may uncover could prevent wrongdoing that may damage an organisation's reputation or performance, and, in extreme circumstances, even save people from harm or death. In relation to whistleblowing protections, the standard employment law definition of a worker has been extended, and includes a wide range of employment relationships, such as agency workers; individuals undertaking work experience; self-employed doctors, dentists and pharmacists in the NHS; job applicants in the health sector; police officers; and student nurses and student midwives. I fully understand that there are people who are not protected by the current legislation. Indeed, Ian Foxley was not covered by the legislation, and suffered hundreds of thousands of pounds of detriment for blowing the whistle. He spent 11 years without any employment, and he was a well-paid contractor prior to that time. Protected from detriment. In Ian Foxley's case, he feared for his life. It could be detriment in terms of loss of employment. There are a number of different detriments. Both protection and compensation should be fairly made. I will come on to what we are trying to do to make the legislation more effective. Do I think the legislation is where it needs to be today? No, I do not. That is the case for the changes we need to make. We need to look at all the different evidential points to ensure we move to the right place. Ian Foxley was a contractor, which is why he did not have the opportunity to get compensation in his case. The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) made a good point about volunteers. They may also be the eyes and ears we need. He made the alarming point that people who blow the whistle could lose everything, which all of us should take into account. People who clearly do not feel they will be properly protected or properly compensated should feel more assured that they will. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) pointed to the fact that the legislation was implemented 25 years ago by one of her predecessors. To give some reassurance, since the introduction of that legislation, the Government have continued to strengthen some of its provisions using non-legislative and legislative measures. We have produced guidance for whistleblowers and prescribed persons, as well as guidance and a code of practice for employers. We have also expanded the list of prescribed persons—the individuals and bodies to whom a worker can blow the whistle. In December 2022, I took forward some legislation to add six new bodies and all Members of the Scottish Parliament to the prescribed persons order. Many have spoken passionately today, and on previous occasions, about the experiences of whistleblowers, and raised concerns about the whistleblowing framework. As I said, the Government have committed to reviewing the framework. It is clearly a major priority of mine, and it has been since I joined the Department. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made the important point that while we must ensure we protect the right people, we do not want to allow for vexatious whistleblowers because that could have a detrimental impact on businesses and other organisations. It is important that we protect those who should be protected. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said, we must protect the people who would have blown the whistle had they had confidence in the framework. That includes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle mentioned, Jonathan Taylor, who blew the whistle in the oil scandal and was pretty much under house arrest for a year in Croatia. That was disgraceful treatment. As I said, making progress on the review has been a priority of mine from day one. There will be an announcement on that very, very soon. That is what we are expecting. We are keen to engage with parliamentarians from across the House, both here and in the other place. Once that review is announced, I am keen to engage particularly with my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle so she can make her points about the right way forward in terms of the provisions we need to make and future changes to legislation. My view, both as a Back Bencher and as a Minister, is that we need to work more on a cross-Government basis than perhaps we do now to make sure that these kinds of measures are properly implemented across Government. A number of Members, including the spokesman for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire, talked about NDAs. As he will know, being a member of the legal fraternity—in law, NDAs cannot be used to prevent a worker from blowing the whistle, so there are some protections in law in that respect. In my view, the key point is the proposal for an office of the whistleblower. I am interested in the issues that dealing with whistleblowing disclosures might raise for the prescribed persons and vice versa. One point to make is that a UK office of the whistleblower would need extensive resources to be able to handle or oversee 50,000 protected disclosures, and significant expertise to ensure it fully understands the nature of the problem and works alongside regulators rather than replaces them. All these matters need to be taken into account in deciding how to proceed. The review is something that we want to bring forward very quickly, and we want hon. Members on both sides of the House to be able to input into it.