Louise Haigh

I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), and the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) on all their incredible work in bringing forward this landmark piece of legislation. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), who is co-sponsoring new clause 74 with me today. This is the first speech I have given as a Back Bencher in nearly 10 years. One of the few benefits of—ahem—elevating oneself to the Back Benches is the ability to speak much more routinely on behalf of my constituents and those without a political voice. The amendment I rise to speak to today is literally about the voiceless: those who have been legally silenced in the name of organisational and personal preservation. New clause 74 would prohibit employers from entering into non-disclosure agreements with workers in relation to complaints of sexual misconduct, abuse, harassment or discrimination. It very closely mirrors legislation recently passed in Ireland that bans NDAs in those circumstances but allows them at the express consent of the victim, and legislation that has been passed in multiple US states in relation to sexual harassment. NDAs have a perfectly legitimate use in business to protect commercial confidentiality and trade, but they are frequently misused to bully people into silence when they have already suffered at work. We know of the most high-profile cases, from Harvey Weinstein to Mohamed Al-Fayed, only because their brave survivors risked breaching their NDAs. But these agreements are far from confined to celebrity abusers; they are being misused and exploited on a vast scale. The campaign Can’t Buy My Silence—led by Zelda Perkins, who helped to expose the abuse of Harvey Weinstein—has also uncovered multiple scandals in the higher education sector, which led to action by the former Government to ban the use of NDAs in that sector. We sadly know that, in our own labour movement, trade unions have been accused of using confidentiality clauses in settlements, which have the same chilling effect as NDAs. I have been told stories—