This piece in City AM summarises a recent report and touches on some interesting themes, including an increase in the number of employees reporting their employers for fraudulently claiming under the CJRS (i.e. “furlough scheme”). The online reporting portal (through which reports can be made) is intended to help HMRC recoup fraudulently claimed funds and has already proven fruitful.
From an employment law perspective, employees making these reports are deemed to have ‘blown the whistle’.
It will be interesting to see what proportion of employees reporting their employer go on to bring whistleblower claims: should we be expecting a flood of claims? On the other hand, we mustn’t forget that the threshold for a successful whistleblowing claim is generally high, with several required elements needing to be satisfied.
So what next? I guess some of the questions left in the air from this piece are:
- Will this give rise to misguided / malicious whistleblowing claims?
- Will employers manage to weed out any such claims?
- How (and how successfully) will employers respond to genuine protected disclosures (whistleblowing claims)?
- Could the Employment Tribunal see a rise in whistleblowing claims?
13,775 whistleblower reports have now been received by HMRC about fraud against the furlough scheme as people report their employers, and ex-employers
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