THE Dean of St Paul's, the Very Revd Dr David Ison, is sitting on an independent commission that is looking at how to encourage employees to blow the whistle on corporate and government misbehaviour.

The eight-member commission, which has already had several meetings, has been set up by the charity Public Concern at Work (PCaW). It is gathering evidence on areas such as attitudes to whistleblowing; whether the law on whistleblowing is effective; and whether there is sufficient protection for whistleblowers.

A statement on the PCaW website said that whistleblowing had been "at the centre of a number of news stories", including the Libor rate-rigging scandal, the Leveson Inquiry, and the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry. "A picture is emerging within the UK that workers who are often the eyes and ears of an organisation are too scared to speak up or dissuaded from raising concerns because of a sense that nothing will be done," it said. "As a result there needs to be an assessment and review of the protection for whistleblowers, and how to encourage individuals to speak up."

Dr Ison said on Monday that he had been interested in standards in public life for several years, having chaired a local-authority standards committee in Bradford when he was the city's Dean.

Dr Ison said that many organisations had "ways of defending themselves against the truth", and there was often "deep-rooted resistance" to holding people to account for wrongdoing.

"It is part of the mission of the Christian Church to improve the way the community cares for each other," he said.

Banking report. Sir James Crosby resigned as an adviser to Bridgepoint, the private equity firm, last Friday after the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards published a report that heavily criticised his part in the demise of the bank HBOS, of which he is a former chief executive. The Archbishop of Canterbury sits on the commission (News, 22 February, 18 January).

Commenting on the publication of the report, the commission's fourth, "An Accident Waiting to Happen": The failure of HBOS, its chairman, Andrew Tyrie MP, said that there had been "catastrophic failures of management, governance, and regulatory oversight" at HBOS.

"The Commission concluded that primary responsibility for these failures should lie with the former chairman of HBOS, Lord Stevenson, and its former chief executives, Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby."