Employers will be prevented from applying non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to gag victims of workplace sexual harassment or discrimination, the government announced. A new clause in the Employment Rights Bill, which is due to become law later this year, will make any confidentiality clauses that are intended to stop employees from discussing claims of harassment or discrimination invalid.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said it was “time we stamped this practice out”.The exploitation of NDAs to conceal criminality has been making headlines since Zelda Perkins, an ex-associate of Hollywood tycoon Harvey Weinstein, defied her NDA in 2017 to accuse Weinstein of sex abuse.
Recently, the late Mohamed Al Fayed, who formerly owned Harrods, was accused of using confidentiality clauses to gag women who accused him of rape and abuse. An NDA is a legal contract which safeguards confidential information between parties. They can safeguard intellectual property or other commercially sensitive material but their purposes have spread over the years.
Ms Perkins started campaigning to change the law over seven years ago. She currently leads the campaign group Can’t Buy My Silence UK and declared the amendment was a ”huge milestone” and that it indicated the government had ”listened and grasped the abuse of power occurring”.
But she declared the win ”belongs to the people who broke their NDAs, who risked everything to tell the truth when they were instructed they couldn’t”. The law change would align the UK with Ireland, the USA, and some Canadian provinces that have prohibited such contracts from being utilized to keep sexual harassment and discrimination from being disclosed.
Ms Perkins indicated the law was welcome, but it was crucial “to make the regulations watertight so no one can be bullied into silence again. Employment rights minister Justin Madders stated that there was “misuse of NDAs to silence victims”, which he referred to as “an appalling practice”.
“These amendments will provide millions of workers with assurance that the wrong kind of behaviour at work will be addressed, not concealed, enabling them to get on with creating a prosperous and successful career,” he continued. Peers will discuss the amendments when the Employment Rights Bill comes back to the House of Lords on 14 July and, when enacted, must be ratified by MPs as well.
