Lee is the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modernising Employment. 

 

His committee recently welcomed Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul and now convicted sex offender, who broke her agreement to accuse him of abuse, to share her story with MPs and Peers. 

 

This Government announcement, that the Employment Rights Bill will void any confidentiality agreements seeking to prevent workers from speaking about allegations of harassment or discrimination, is a real success for people power. 

 

An NDA is a legally binding document that protects confidential information between two parties. They can be used to protect intellectual property or other commercially sensitive information but over the years their uses have spread. 

 

Non-disclosure agreements are contracts that were created to protect trade secrets but when used wrongly become secret settlement contracts used to buy the silence of a victim or whistle blower. 

 

They have become the default solution for organisations, corporations and public bodies to settle cases of sexual misconduct, racism, pregnancy discrimination and other human rights violations and this is simply not acceptable. 

 

An amendment to the Employment Rights Bill, which is expected to become law later this year, will void any confidentiality agreements seeking to prevent workers from speaking about allegations of harassment or discrimination. 

 

Zelda Perkins runs the campaign group Can't Buy My Silence UK and said the amendment marked a ''huge milestone'' and that it showed the government had ''listened and understood the abuse of power taking place". 

 

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