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".

A qualifying disclosure will be a protected disclosure if it is made to one of the categories of people listed in sections 43C to 43H of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Protection is subject to certain conditions, which vary according to which category of person the disclosure is made to.

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

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