A term used in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 1996) to refer to certain disclosures of information by an employee or a worker, often referred to as "whistleblowing".

For there to have been a qualifying disclosure, the employee or worker must have made a disclosure of information, which in their reasonable belief relates to one of six types of "relevant failure" and is in the public interest (section 43B, ERA 1996).

Employees who make a protected qualifying disclosure are protected against dismissal and both employees and workers are protected against suffering a detriment on grounds of having made a protected qualifying disclosure.

For more information, see Practice note, Whistleblowing (2): what is a protected disclosure?.