Recently there have been hours of news time and pages of newspaper reports regarding the leaking of tweets by reporter Isabel Oakeshott that were forwarded to her by Matt Hancock, former Health Minister. Hundreds of tweets detail exchanges between Mr. Hancock and colleagues during the COVID pandemic. I’ve no wish to debate the content of those tweets, not in today’s blog anyway. Instead, I am focusing on the fact that Ms Oakeshott felt justified to forward them to a newspaper and what this appears to say about privacy and confidentiality. 

She confirms she signed a non-disclosure agreement but felt that the information being confidentially sent to her was in the public interest to be revealed. It hasn’t been made clear if her altruistic act came with a payment from the parties she leaked to, you’d think not as the act was in such an apparently important cause.

So a nondisclosure agreement made between parties isn’t watertight and indeed shouldn’t be if the greater good is at stake but there is a double context here.  Surely if you enter into such an agreement and you know it’s between you and a politician there must be an expectation that some material may be sensitive?  And what of Mr. Hancock’s actions in giving over all those tweets in the first place, did he get permission from each recipient and sender to disclose those messages to a third party, let alone a journalist? Also, if the ‘public interest’ case is so strong, will the book be written, published and distributed free of charge?  I don’t think so!

The surprising thing is how little attention these particular points received.  Ok,  it was mentioned initially, and our altruistic journalist was asked if she’d ever be trusted again, yes she replied because ‘I’m good at my job’. If you say so! In another recent case, Footballer Kyle Walker is facing a police investigation for flashing two girls he was with at a nightclub in Manchester. Highly questionable behavior and quite right it should be investigated, but the Sun newspaper ran the story with images from the club’s CCTV.

Where did they get this material, was it a worker at the venue who felt it was their public duty to give the footage to the press, was it in the public interest and as such given over free of charge?

I acknowledge the CCTV images used pixeled out the other people in the images so I guess they circumvented GDPR, but surely the people featured did not expect to have their evening published in a national newspaper? Maybe they should expect nothing more if it was in such an apparently important cause.

Perhaps  we should be thankful there are so many public-spirited people out there who are driven to disregard waivers and privacy legislation to reveal such crucial information for the greater good with not a single thought of their own personal gain.

In the world of employment, we have Whistleblowing procedures, described by the CIPD as being ‘when current or former members of staff disclose illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices within the organisation to those who may be able to take action’. I and I’m sure a greater number of employers support whistleblowing because if a company doesn’t listen to their team members when they highlight unsafe working practices or injustices it is just that an employee has a protected right to raise greater awareness.  But this is should be to a body that can take action and instigate action, not just a report to a newspaper. 

Yes the press can get the message out there, but is it an accurate message and one aimed at finding genuine solutions or is it just to create headlines and hang the consequences? 

The big concern with these high-profile cases is the lack of focus on the breaches of confidentiality. If this is not made an issue, every bit as much as the information released itself, how can we hope to ensure that confidentiality is maintained in any walk of life let alone in employment? 

What of without-prejudice conversations or settlement agreements, both have elements of confidentiality and both have parameters in which they become void or nonapplicable.  Does this also mean confidentiality can be opted out of for the gain of a new headline safe in the knowledge that the focus will be on the material not the breach?