Non-disclosure Agreements in the Workplace

Harriet Harman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman brings up an important point. How employees are treated goes to the very heart of the culture of an organisation; we can judge an organisation on how it treats the people who work for it.

My strong feeling is that we need to show leadership on the issue of NDAs. We need to make it clear from this place that such agreements have no place in the British workplace. It is regrettable that some organisations appear to be using NDAs to silence their employees. I sometimes wonder how transparent that is to the management of the organisations. Senior managers need to be asking some serious questions of their HR departments about how such agreements are drawn up.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for her initiative in bringing forward this debate; I absolutely agree with every word that she has said and how she has put the case. I say to the Minister that if he does what the right hon. Member is asking, we will give our full support. At this stage in a Government it is sometimes difficult to do good, but if he accedes to the right hon. Member’s proposals he could do a major piece of good.

Non-disclosure agreements are unfair on the individual. As the right hon. Member said, backed up by figures, they double down and are a ratchet on discrimination. As she also said, they are perilous for the organisations, as covering up wrongdoing introduces rot. Whatever words, written by the civil service, are in the Minister’s extremely good brief, he should have a think about doing this. He will get wholehearted support from us. The right hon. Member is putting forward a really sensible case, and I thank her for that.

[Dame Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. and learned Lady, the Mother of the House, for those kind words of support. This is not a political issue; that is really important.

I couched my opening statement in terms of productivity because what really offends me to the core is that good people are being put out of employment for the wrong reasons. That often undermines their confidence and career in a way that they find it difficult to come back from, although there are notable examples of when that has not been the case.

I am thinking in particular of the evidence given to the Women and Equalities Committee for our maternity discrimination report, in which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) played a part. We heard about people being pushed out of employment simply because they were pregnant. They then found it very difficult to get back into work afterwards. The issue has real consequences for our economy. I know that the Minister feels strongly about the importance of productivity; what we are discussing is part of the piece that we need to get right.

Can’t Buy My Silence, the organisation that brought in the universities pledge, is working on a similar voluntary agreement for businesses to stop using inappropriate NDAs; perhaps that fills a vacuum created by the many consultations going on at the moment, in both Government and other organisations. That business pledge is to be welcomed. The organisation has been shown to be powerful in turning its words into law. The pledge commits a business not to using non-disclosure agreements or clauses to silence people who raise complaints of sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct, discrimination, retaliation, bullying or other harassment, at the point of hiring, at termination or at any other stage. The organisation, very ably led by Zelda Perkins, has secured its first supporters, including a law firm, which I think shows the strength of the way the pledge has been put together and put to businesses.

When the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, in her time as Minister responsible for higher education, brought in the universities pledge, she said of the use of NDAs that she was

“determined to see this shabby practice stamped out on our campuses”.

I hope that the Minister replying today—I know my hon. Friend well—will wish to see this shabby practice stamped out across the whole economy, too.

Most confidentiality agreements are put in place by people other than lawyers. Other regulatory bodies have issued guidance on NDAs, as we would expect. Acas advises that NDAs should not be used

“to cover up inappropriate behaviour or misconduct, especially if there’s a risk of it happening again”.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the body for human resources professionals, recognises that NDAs should not be used to silence people in situations of harassment, discrimination or bullying and organisations should never exert pressure on someone to sign. But the evidence of the scale of the problem shows that the advice is simply not cutting through—it is not enough. Many employers relying on the online model agreements to which I referred earlier are simply perpetuating a cycle in which NDAs, confidentiality clauses, are seen as the norm, to silence victims of wrongdoing. Therefore it is time that we turned advice and encouragement into law—I think there are very clear indications that organisations such as the Bar Council are also seeing that as the way forward and I am sure the Minister will be aware of that—so that apparently legal clauses in legal contracts cannot be used by anyone, lawyer or not, to cover up illegal wrongdoing at work.

My determination to see change on this issue stems in no small part from an interview that I saw with Zelda Perkins on “Newsnight”, which was followed by the 2019 report by the Women and Equalities Committee—I chaired it at the time—on non-disclosure agreements. The evidence given to the Committee during that inquiry left me in absolutely no doubt that this was an issue largely under the radar and urgently in need of legislative solutions. The debate today is to remind the Government of the issue and of the need to act.

I believe in a fair society in which each of us has the opportunity to reach our potential, especially in education and in work; that is the society that we should all be striving for. Equally, I believe that it is the role of Parliament to remove the barriers that people encounter in achieving that aim. Non-disclosure agreements are a barrier to people reaching their full potential at work, a barrier to fairness and a barrier to the laws that we pass in this place working in practice. They must be outlawed where they cover up illegal wrongdoing. I hope that the Minister replying today can agree that the status quo is not an option.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I was almost tempted to say to the hon. Lady, “Just carry on, and I won’t bother summing up.” I do not think that I have ever seen agreement among so many speakers in a debate, and I certainly do not expect to say anything that will change that.

I am not entirely sure what the comment by the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) was about. If her point was about having to keep apologising to Front-Bench males for things that have to be said, she does not ever have to apologise to me for pointing out that I am part of the 49% who have caused most of this problem. Most of the speakers today are part of the 51% who have been on the receiving end of the problem, though they have not always been; there was a time when NDAs were routinely abused between powerful men to cover up each other’s crimes and frauds. Most NDAs now are being used by powerful men to silence and victimise vulnerable women, and that is the abuse of the system that must be dealt with most urgently.

[Ms Harman]

The hon. Member has demonstrated himself to be a male ally, and we would not underestimate the importance of having male allies on this. There is an opportunity for the Minister to be not a force of resistance but a male ally and to follow the example of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant).

[Peter Grant]

When I write my memoirs after I retire in a year or so, I will make sure to point out the time I got an honourable mention in dispatches by no less a person than the Mother of the House.

Just to reflect on some of what has been said, there is an absolutely legitimate need for confidentiality between employer and employee. Nobody is questioning that. Even after an employee has left employment, the employer is entitled to expect a degree of confidentiality and respect. The duty of care between an employer and employee in both directions does not just suddenly stop when the employee leaves.

But that duty of care—that right of confidentiality—can never, ever be justified if it is being used to prevent an employee from exercising the rights that this Parliament has given them as a matter of law: their rights to raise a grievance, to claim unfair dismissal and to get a fair hearing through the appropriate channels. It can never be justified if its intention is to cover up criminal conduct or other unlawful behaviour. In a great number of the cases that we have heard of—and no doubt many others that we have not heard of—where NDAs have been used to silence victims of workplace harassments, the behaviour is well above the threshold that constitutes criminal assault, and in almost all the other ones, it is well above the threshold that constitutes unlawful, unacceptable behaviour, so in almost every case we are talking about today, NDAs are being used to pervert the course of justice. We know that the law is being misused in this way; it is time to put that right.

We are not going to, in the next few years, address all the issues about mistreatment at work, or all the ways that mistreatment can be perpetrated and allowed to continue, but we should certainly be carrying on with the progress that has been made already and address as many as possible. Given the degree of agreement across the House, I hope the Minister will be listening and recognise that it this is an issue to be taken on quickly, because it is that will get unanimous—or near-unanimous—support across the whole House.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) mentioned the part that some professional societies have played. I think we need to get stronger with them as well. A number of professional regulators or chartered institutes should be told, “We want you to put into the code of professional ethics that knowingly misusing an NDA is gross professional misconduct, and that people will be struck off as a lawyer or banned from using the continuous professional development logo on their headed notepaper if they are found to be behaving in this way.”

I think that deliberately exploiting the fact that an employee probably does not fully understand their rights—that the employee is scared and wants to get away from the situation all together—to cajole them into signing something that is clearly against their interests is serious enough to be a criminal matter, rather than just a matter of employment law or of private civil law. It should not need the employee to find a lawyer who will represent them and take their case through the civil courts. Employers, business managers and company directors who deliberately exploit an employee’s ignorance and fear would be committing a criminal offence. They should be facing criminal sanctions, rather than, as has just been mentioned, a civil settlement that some would not notice if it disappeared out of their pockets every day.

Although I welcome the progress that has been made in the universities sector, and commend those who have brought forward private Members’ Bills to try to address these issues, we have not got time to go through one sector at a time, because while we are dealing with one sector, more and more people will be victimised in others.

I must say to the Minister, although I know that it has not been in his gift for all that long a time, why does it have to be left to private Members’ Bills? When the Government committed four years ago to legislate for this, why has nothing happened yet? It is not because there has not been enough Government time. There have been days when the House has collapsed three, four or five hours early, or days when the Whips have been running around, desperately trying to get people into the Chamber to intervene because the Government had reasons for not wanting the business to collapse before the advertised moment of interruption. If the Government were willing to put as much political determination into this as into other things, we would have it on the statute book already, but we do not. What better opportunity is there for a Minister to make their mark a few weeks before the King’s Speech?

The debate could not have been better timed—it is an opportunity for the Minister to make his mark. Who knows, he might be back as a Minister in the next Parliament. Nothing is guaranteed, although some things could be regarded as surprising, if the same party comes back into office—not the Minister personally, whom I have no doubt does a great job. Elections are never done deals until the votes are counted, so we never know; it might still be him or one of his colleagues after the election.

Mention has been made of the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which I remember being a huge fan of when it first came out. Previously, I worked in a finance position at the Fife health board. I had stories that I wanted to tell, but there was no one I could tell them to. Eventually I did; the stories were denied, but a few years later Fife health board ran into a financial black hole of £4 million at the time—in today’s money, probably up to £10 million. I had seen it coming, but I could not get anyone to listen to me.

Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, someone else in such a position now would be able to ensure that the necessary people were made aware of it. That, however, applies only to disclosures by some people of some kinds of information to some recipients in certain circumstances; it is not a free-for-all. At the very least, we need to extend the Act to cover people who are not employed directly or are third parties, for example. We need to amend the law to make it explicit that anything that would be protected where someone is a contractor, supplier, business colleague or whatever continues to be protected afterwards.

We must remember that the Act explicitly does not protect vindictive or malicious disclosures. It does not protect someone who is touting a story around the tabloids to see which will pay them most. It does not protect those kinds of disclosures; it only protects disclosures where there is a genuine belief that the person is acting in the public interest, where there is a need to disclose in order to prevent criminal activity or serious damage to the public interest. Surely the same standard should apply after someone has ceased to be an employee. Surely it is right that an employee—or someone who is in effect an employee, because they work through an agency, on a zero-hours contract or whatever—even after they are no longer being paid by the employer, should still have the right to go to a recognised recipient, which is usually the relevant regulator or statutory body, to say: “This is what is happening in that organisation. I think that you need to take action.”

Before I wind up, I will give one example. Not surprisingly, we have focused on the misuse of NDAs to cover up cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I have heard one or two examples where they are used in other circumstances. I want to talk briefly about Rhona Malone, a police officer in Scotland. By all accounts, she was a dedicated and professional police officer, who should have had a bright career in front of her. She did, until she applied to join the Police Scotland firearms unit. She was told that she could not, because women cannot be firearms officers. She raised a grievance, but people tried to silence her: they offered her an NDA with an undisclosed, but frankly insulting, level of compensation. She stood her ground and took Police Scotland to a tribunal. Police Scotland has been ordered to pay the best part of £1 million in damages as a result.

I cannot go too much into the details of the argument, because I understand that one of the officers who testified at the tribunal has now been charged with perjury. The thing has become much more serious, and a number of things have come out. The reason she was not allowed to train as a firearms officer was that, in the eyes of senior people in Police Scotland, women are not capable of dealing with the physical demands of being a firearms officer or women on their period might get irrational so could not be trusted with a firearm.

Surely the person who exposed the fact that those attitudes were accepted in one of the major law enforcement agencies in these islands should be thanked. Surely she should be in line for an honour. Why on earth was she forced to leave the career to which she had dedicated herself? Why is possibly one of the best senior police officers of the future not there any more? What a loss to policing in Scotland and elsewhere. Yes, she had compensation, and yes, it is quite right that it should have been punitive libel, because how she was treated was utterly despicable, but why did no one senior in Police Scotland step in at some point to say, “We should not be trying to buy the silence of this officer. We should be sitting down to speak to this officer and to say thank you, because she has exposed something in our organisation that is utterly unacceptable, whether in a public or a private sector organisation”?

There is nothing that anyone has said in the Chamber today that I would meet with anything other than wholesale agreement. I suspect that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), will also agree with everything that has been said. I sincerely hope that when the Minister speaks he will commit to agreeing in not only his words but his actions. As I have said before, we are coming up to the King’s Speech, and some of us will be listening very carefully to what is in that speech.