Should Whistle-blowers be suspended?

Well, there are all sorts of employment protections in place for whistle-blowers at private firms and in the public sector, but not apparently in government ministries, for whom the law doesn't seem to apply at this moment in time. In general, provided you don't fall foul of the Official Secrets Act, you should get good protection in employment law for whistle-blowing. Of course, there are ways and means. He probably wasn't suspended, he was sent on gardening leave. It is an important protection in law against the state - see particularly the Matrix Churchill affair, where John Major's government were quite prepared to see businessmen sent to jail even though they had the full clandestine support of the government for doing the 'illegal' things that they had been doing. Arms to Iraq, remember...? If it hadn't been for whistle-blowers, the government would have been complicit in sending not innocent, but not entirely culpable men to prison.

Yes, thanks very much Andrew! I think I remember. I can remember a 'Super Gun' that Iraq hoped it would be able to use to fire nuclear shells for very long distances - was that the Matrix Churchill affair? The government authorised an export licence but claimed they thought they were simple pipes, or something like that, but it came out that they were high precision machined parts meant to be part of the gun barrel and the goverment had known that all along. I'm slowly but surely realising that Democracy is more about laws than votes. We vote to put people in power who we hope will pass sensible and necessary laws and perhaps repeal redundant or unfair laws. The power of Democracy is in giving people some say in which laws are passed and perhaps more importantly, via public opinion, how they are interpreted. Of course we need to know what’s going on before we can comment on it - and that’s why I’m nervous about the government’s recent triumph over the BBC. [%sig%]

Cooking the books? Another example of governmental hypocrisy. Robin Cook built up his parliamentary reputation in opposition by attacking the Tories for their use of Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates (so-called "gagging orders") in the arms-to-Iraq affair and then after becoming Foreign Secretary he issued a PII against a businessman he had previously championed! "Shadow Foreign Secretary John Maples denounced Mr Cook's action as "a hypocritical U-turn". He said: "How rich in irony that Robin Cook, who in opposition championed the cause of this individual, should now, in government, with a wave of his pen, prevent Mr Grecian's access to justice." "Mr Grecian was one of four businessmen connected with the Reading-based arms firm Ordtec, who were wrongly convicted in 1992 of illegally exporting an artillery fuse assembly line to Iraq via Jordan." [%sig%]