Kramer quizzes Watson re whistleblowers

6.58.56pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 24th Jun 2008

' . . Will he confirm that in his guidelines he will not kneecap whistleblowers?'

[June 18] Susan Kramer (Cabinet Office; Richmond Park, Liberal Democrat): The Minister will be well aware that an early alert that senior civil servants were wandering home with key documents without authorisation appeared on the blog "Civil Serf". Will he confirm that in his guidelines he will not kneecap whistleblowers? Will he give us an assurance that the civil service will not sign up to the national staff dismissal register, which would allow the organisation to blacklist people on the mere suspicion that their conduct might not be attractive?

Tom Watson (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; West Bromwich East, Labour): Let me assure the hon. Lady that the challenge for the power of information taskforce is to get our civil servants to engage in online communities in an appropriate manner. Clearly, one of the things that underpins our hard-working public servants is the notion of common sense, and I hope that they will apply that in their online activities as much as their offline activities.

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