Mr. Matthew Elderfield:

I am positive that we cannot get into the individual circumstances.

On whistleblowing more generally, there is one frustrating aspect about it for the whistleblower and, I am sure, for Deputies. In terms of the new law that is coming in, we will have this framework that says one can now make a protected disclosure. We have to treat that individual in a confidential way. Unless there is an exclusion it is necessary to reveal the person for the purposes of pursuing the investigation. We are thinking through that in terms of the circumstances in which the information would be disclosed. The Financial Services Authority, FSA, for instance, tries under all circumstances not to disclose the individual's name but sometimes it is very hard to investigate that. That is one aspect of it.

The protected disclosure is great. The new framework means employment action cannot be taken against the individual. They are protected, etc., but we also have a duty as a regulator - I am talking in our context - to keep the firm's information confidential. We will have the whistleblower present information to us but we cannot come back to them, and I think that drives them nuts. It probably drives the members nuts when they talk to the whistleblowers, but that is the nature of it. We must be confidential towards the firms and the individuals. We also must be confidential, in this context, to our staff members under employment law. There are protections for whistleblowing. One cares about the policies that are in place but when one wants to get to what happened to it, typically it happens internal to the supervisor in terms of the actions that are taken.

Of the approximately 42 whistleblowing incidents we had last year, we took actions on about half of them. Half of them we find do not have any legs, so to speak; there is not enough to go on. Sometimes they go to enforcement and sometimes they go to supervisory action. We take whistleblowing seriously internally and from the point of view of the firms too.