Jersey’s draft whistleblowing law: Our thoughts

In March 2026, the Minister for Social Security published a draft whistleblowing law setting out the provisional framework for protection for protected disclosures under Jersey law. This is very much a working draft, with a view to receiving comments on the draft to assist the new council of ministers in determining whether to implement whistleblowing protection in the future and if so on what basis.

The Employment Forum in Jersey recommended implementing a protected disclosure regime in June 2025. A key element of that recommendation was to adopt as much as possible of the existing UK protected disclosures legislation. However, in our view, the draft law departs materially from both the UK approach and the Employment Forum’s recommendations in a number of areas, creating the potential for complication and scope for confusion. 

Our Employment Law team ran a round table with clients from the financial services industry in Jersey in June 2026 and submitted comments on Jersey's draft whistleblowing law drawing on the views of those in attendance and the experience of its skilled employment lawyers. 

Our key observations and recommendations are summarised below.

When is a disclosure protected?

Somewhat unexpectedly and in divergence to the UK approach, the draft law sets out procedural requirements for making a protected disclosure. If those specific steps are not taken, a disclosure will not be a protected disclosure. This is, in our view, a positive step as it provides certainty to employers and avoids situations which can arise in the UK whereby neither employer nor employee realise a protected disclosure has been made at the time. 

However, the draft law does not currently require that the discloser actually holds a reasonable belief in wrongdoing, or that they are acting in the public interest, or are not acting for financial gain. As drafted, the disclosure merely needs to state that they are not acting for financial gain when making a protected disclosure – without any requirement that this needs to be true or genuine. We think that this must be corrected so that genuine reasonable belief and public interest are substantive requirements, not just boxes to be ticked. This is particularly important given the scope for an individual to use AI to draft a protected disclosures without necessarily giving the substantive issues much thought. 

Roundtable attendees were also concerned that the draft law's application of a 'not for financial gain' requirement as a standard condition for all disclosures could discourage genuine disclosures involving mixed motives. We prefer that this requirement only applies to external disclosures to non-responsible authorities (eg the media), consistent with the UK position and the Employment Forum's recommendation. 

Recipients of disclosures and media safeguards

The draft permits disclosures to any listed authority rather than the responsible authority. We consider this creates a risk of misdirected reports (for example, a care home employee disclosing to the JFSC rather than the Health and Social Care Commission). We recommend guidance makes clear that reports should be made to the responsible authority wherever possible.

Significant concerns were raised about the protection afforded to media disclosures at our roundtable. Jersey is a small jurisdiction without a regulated media industry or enforceable professional journalistic standards. The draft names 'the media' as a class of recipient but does not define this term (including whether social media is covered) and does not include the detailed factors for assessment of reasonableness which are found in UK legislation. We consider enhanced guardrails are needed and have fed back on this point in detail. 

Presumption of protection and duties on recipients

The draft law provides that any disclosure which 'purports to be' a protected disclosure is treated as protected until proved otherwise. If reasonable belief is already required, we do not see the rationale for this presumption and recommend its removal.

The draft law also imposes duties on recipients of disclosures (including confidentiality, investigation and written outcomes) which go beyond UK statutory employment law and were not recommended by the Employment Forum. These obligations may create practical difficulties for employers, including around maintaining confidentiality versus the ability to investigate, and obligations to share information with regulators. Given no penalty is imposed for failure to comply, the rationale for imposing the duties is also unclear. 

Scope of protection and remedy

The draft law currently requires an individual to establish that they have been treated 'less favourably' to bring a claim. This requires a comparison exercise with someone who has not made a disclosure, and would require the tribunal to consider actual or hypothetical comparators, which complicates the process. In our view a better approach would be to adopt 'detriment' as the standard for retaliatory protection, as this is the more familiar and workable concept for non-retaliation law in Jersey and the UK. 

We consider protection against retaliation should extend only to the whistleblower and those who are known to have supported a qualifying protected disclosure. Currently the draft also extends protection to those who express an intention to make a protected disclosure which is unworkable in practice, providing a route to circumvent the prescriptive requirements for what amounts to a protected disclosure. This should be removed. 

We have also highlighted that the draft law (which voids contractual clauses preventing disclosures) prevents employers and employees from settling whistleblowing claims by statutory compromise agreement. We expect this is unintentional and should be corrected to match the requirements for compromise agreements under the Employment (Jersey) Law 2003 and Discrimination (Jersey) Law 2013.

What should employers be doing now?

Although there is not yet a timetable suggesting when the draft law will come into force, employers should begin reviewing their whistleblowing channels, escalation routes and associated training programmes so that they are well-placed to comply once the legislation progresses. Our Employment team is available to assist with readiness planning and policy review.