Non-disclosure Agreements

Sarah Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

I certainly will not take that long—that would not make me very popular at all.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Betts, and to follow such informative and heartfelt speeches. I wish that there were more people here, because I have learned something new from every single speaker—those who spoke because this issue matters to them and those, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell), who have huge experience in this area. It is well worth sharing the information that we have heard with colleagues, so that it does not stay within these four walls.

There will probably be some bad-faith actors out there who will want to read what we say as a desire to ban NDAs altogether and not protect commercially sensitive information. That is absolutely not what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), or any of the other campaigners who have worked hard on this issue, have laid out. Our intention is purely to stop the abuse, discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment that we have heard about. I praise my right hon. Friend for seeking to include a measure on this subject in the Employment Rights Bill, and the Minister for saying that they will work on an issue on which we have not seen progress, despite the existence of quite a lot of cross-party consensus.

We have heard about the high-profile cases, and we know that women are five times more likely to have signed an NDA than men, but the problem is not just the scale; it is that victims of discrimination or sexual harassment are asked to sign NDAs at their most vulnerable moment. Pregnant Then Screwed estimated that around 435,000 pregnant women and mothers in the UK have signed NDAs, and 80% of those felt they had to either leave their job or cut their hours as a result of the NDA. Those are shocking statistics. Surely, that goes against the Government’s aim to ensure that people get work, get the jobs they want, and stay in work and progress. This is not just about injustice; it is also about the growth agenda.

We do not know the true scale of the issue. I am grateful that Can’t Buy My Silence, Pregnant Then Screwed and other organisations are working on estimates, but we should not be working on estimates; we should know the full scale of what is happening throughout our economy. I do not know how many people are subjected to NDAs in Luton North. I really should. We all should, and we should know which employers are abusing the system.

Why do people sign NDAs, and why are they predominantly women? It is because of the huge power imbalance. We have heard about the low pay, and the lack of justice and of access to justice. They often feel that it is their only option and their only way out. They think, “If I don’t take this, what else am I going to get?” The big CEO of a corporation is not going to get taken down by the cleaner. That just does not happen; it only happens in films. That is because our justice system is not balanced or fair, and people feel that the oppression of workers is just part of the cost of doing business.

An NDA not only leaves the victim without a sense of justice, but protects a culture of wrongdoing. Not only does it protect the wrongdoer every step of the way, but, a large chunk of the time, they actually fail up. I have heard about instances of sexual harassment in the workplace in which the woman has to sign an NDA and leave, while the man gets to stay—in fact, not only does he stay, but he is either moved aside to a different department or promoted to gain more power and access. That is happening in all parts of our economy, in every workplace. We saw it at Harrods, and we have just seen it at Primark. It is really downplayed. I think that NDAs are used to downplay the severity of what they are truly hiding. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, people hide disgusting behaviour behind NDAs.

The boss of Primark has just resigned for what he called an “error of judgment” with regard to his behaviour towards a woman. An “error of judgment” is when I decide to dress for winter but it is really hot outside; it is not something that a CEO has to resign for because of his behaviour towards a woman. It is not just about protecting the victim; it is also about how we improve the culture in business and in our economy. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley said, this does not just happen in one sector; it happens in charities, in finance and, unfortunately, in trade unions. We have heard about it at the Women and Equalities Committee.

I plead with the Minister to not forget self-employed workers. Whatever changes we make—and I hope that we make progress—we must consider the vulnerability of self-employed workers. The Committee heard that loud and clear in the evidence we received on our misogyny in music inquiry. We heard from brave witnesses, including Charisse Beaumont, Lucy Cox and Celeste. Dr Beaumont, who is the CEO of Black Lives in Music, said:

“We have hundreds of stories from women of being harassed including sexually assaulted by male artists as well as promoters, people assaulting women in music education, participating in almost naked casting videos, young women pressured to drink and take drugs, who are then assaulted, male producers grooming young female vocalists.”

She added:

“It’s rife in all genres, particularly classical music.”

I want to pay tribute to one of the very brave female artists who did speak out. She came from the classical music industry, and she spoke at our Select Committee. I really do recommend reading her testimony. She spoke about the horrendous behaviour of some of the conductors towards female classical musicians, the sexual favours that those women were asked for in order to get the first positions, and the fact that one conductor had said, “Well, if you want to be in the first chair, you’re going to have to wait until someone dies or gets pregnant.” In the classical music industry, they equated pregnancy with death. I want to say how difficult it was, and how hard my Clerks had to work, to find women who were prepared to speak out against the misogyny and sexual harassment that they had faced in the music industry.

The last Tory Government agreed that there was a problem with misogyny in music but rejected every one of the Committee’s recommendations. I ask this Government to do better. One of those recommendations was about banning NDAs. The general secretary of the Musicians’ Union, Naomi Pohl, has called for a ban on NDAs that prohibit the disclosure of sexual harassment, discrimination or bullying. Some 51% of women report experiencing gender discrimination in music, and 32% of them have been sexually harassed while working as a musician. That proportion increases if the woman is from a global majority—black, Asian or minority ethnic—background, disabled or LGBT+.

Lawyers are probably getting quite excited by the thought of what alternatives there might be to NDAs, so I say to the Minister that we need to be innovative. We need to be ahead of the curve and of all the bad-faith actors. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley is right: we should not be falling behind as a country; we should be leading the way. Minister, the evidence is there—let us get to it.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I thank everyone for their co-operation. We now move on to the Front-Bench spokespeople, each of whom has, as a guide, around 10 minutes, but we clearly have more time than that if people want to take it.