New legislation aiming to tackle mis-use of NDAs

On Tuesday 14th September, in parliament, Maria Miller MP, called for the government to introduce a Bill to ban the mis-use of NDAs. She said 'We have some of the best laws and regulations in the world to protect people from bullying, discrimination and abuse in the workplace, yet we allow scurrilous employers to conceal unlawful wrongdoing through the use of non-disclosure agreements, effectively rendering legal protections that we have voted for in this Chamber null and void.'

She explained "At the moment, non-disclosure agreements are completely unregulated. They can be, and are being, used to attempt to cover up even criminal allegations; they can even include unenforceable conditions to scare employees away from seeking support or redress from the criminal justice system or the employment tribunal system. My Bill would change that by restricting the use of non-disclosure agreements and ensuring that employees could always enjoy the protection of the law as intended."

Referencing the MeToo campaign which highlighted this issue she said "Since the #MeToo campaign started in 2017 and the Women and Equalities Committee published its report in 2019, the scale of the problem has been very difficult for the Government to get their hands around. No statistics are published, because people who have agreed to an NDA may feel that they cannot tell a third party that they have undertaken such an agreement. That is why I support Can’t Buy My Silence, the new campaign launched today by Zelda Perkins, which will enable people who have had bad experiences of NDAs to talk publicly about them for the first time, anonymously."

The House agreed the Bill should be presented and it was read for the first time, and will be read for a second time on Friday 18th March 2022

If you would like to support Zelda Perkins' 'Can't Buy My Silence' campaign - please do so here - https://actionstorm.org/petitions/cant-buy-my-silence