Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the use of non-disclosure agreements during corporate restructuring in safety-critical sectors; and he plans to ensure that non-disclosure agreements cannot prevent employees and union representatives from participating in statutory consultation processes.

The Government is unable to assess sector-specific trends regarding the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) because they are private contractual arrangements, and data on their use is not collected.

While NDAs can legally require one or more parties to maintain the confidentiality of certain information, such as trade secrets, there are a range of legal limitations on their use. For instance, NDAs cannot stop someone from making a whistleblowing disclosure, known as making a ‘protected disclosure’ or making a disclosure required by law.