Layla Moran

Absolutely. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that we need to put a stop to. The young woman eventually reached a settlement, but it was extremely one-sided. She panicked, because the NDA gagged not just her but her partner, her best friends and her parents, but it did not gag the men or the senior executives involved in the harassment that she faced. It covered not just business matters—we are not seeking to stop confidentiality agreements on business matters—but everything painful that she had endured. Her mental health spiralled and she ended up in hospital. Every day that she was in a hospital bed, the lawyers sent her automatic reminders to sign her NDA. This was a woman at her most vulnerable. It is entirely wrong that she was put in that position. It is worth saying that almost none of that NDA is enforceable. It if was taken to court, it would fail. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 makes it clear that she should have been able to get that support. We are kidding ourselves if we think that NDAs are not still being used and issued. They are. That is why this Bill—whether now, in the Lords or wherever—needs to put a stop to it. Many years on, following an investigation into the treatment of these workers at ITN, the woman does believe that the organisation is trying to change, and she is grateful to the executives from within who are pushing for reform. The latest update is that ITN is willing to renegotiate her NDA. That is laudable, but she should never have been put under one in the first place, and those protections should be everywhere. We face a weird situation which we in the House have created. In the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, there is a provision—it was tabled as an amendment by Labour and taken on in the Lords by the then Conservative Government—that says that such non-disclosure agreements are not allowed, but it covers only higher education settings, because that was the scope of the Act. I am an Oxford MP. How does it make any sense at all that I might have a constituent who is protected from such non-disclosure agreements if they work for the university but not if they work for any of the university spin-outs?