New harassment rules for UK workers

Summary

• Q: What are the new UK rules on workplace harassment and NDAs?
• A: The UK government is banning employers from using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality clauses to silence victims or witnesses of workplace harassment and discrimination. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, any such clause will be void, ending the culture of gagging agreements around abuse.
• Q: When do these changes come into effect?
• A: Sexual harassment disclosures gain explicit whistleblowing protection from 6 April 2026. The strengthened duty to prevent sexual harassment and new liability for third-party harassment arrive in October 2026. The core NDA ban will follow after further consultation, with implementation expected in 2027.
• Q: Who benefits and what should UK employers do now?
• A: Millions of UK workers will gain stronger protection and the freedom to speak out. Employers should immediately review settlement agreements, contracts, and policies to remove restrictive clauses and prepare for greater transparency and potential claims. Legitimate business confidentiality remains protected.

Article

The UK government has announced sweeping changes to workplace protections, declaring that victims of harassment and discrimination will no longer be forced into silence through controversial non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).

The reforms, introduced via amendments to the Employment Rights Bill (now enacted as the Employment Rights Act 2025), aim to prevent employers from using gagging clauses to cover up misconduct and empower workers to speak out.

Under the new rules, any provision in an agreement between an employer and a worker that seeks to prevent disclosure of “relevant harassment or discrimination”, or the employer’s response to such allegations, will be void.

This applies to settlement agreements, employment contracts, and other confidentiality clauses. The changes protect not only direct victims but also witnesses who experience or observe abhorrent behaviour in the workplace.

Ending the culture of silence

The Department for Business and Trade stated that the Employment Rights Bill “will ban any NDA used for this purpose, so that no one is forced to suffer in silence.”

The move responds to long-standing criticism that NDAs have been misused to hush up cases of sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination, allowing perpetrators and negligent employers to avoid accountability.

The ban covers disclosures relating to:

• Harassment (including sexual harassment) or discrimination by the employer, a supervisor, fellow worker, or in some contexts, third parties.
• The employer’s handling of allegations, such as failures to investigate or retaliatory actions like poor performance reviews.

While the core ban targets silencing clauses, the government has indicated that regulations will define “excepted agreements” – limited circumstances where NDAs may still be enforceable, potentially including cases where the worker themselves requests confidentiality, provided strict conditions are met.

Employers will still be able to use NDAs to protect legitimate commercial sensitivities unrelated to misconduct.

Broader 2026 harassment reforms

The NDA restrictions form part of a wider package of changes coming into force in 2026 under the Employment Rights Act and related legislation:

• From 6 April 2026: Disclosures about sexual harassment will explicitly qualify as protected whistleblowing disclosures. This gives workers stronger legal safeguards against retaliation when they raise concerns.
• From October 2026: The existing duty on employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment will be strengthened to “all reasonable steps” — a significantly higher threshold requiring proactive, documented risk assessments and preventative measures.
• Employers will also become directly liable for harassment by third parties (such as customers, clients, patients, or contractors) unless they can demonstrate they took all reasonable steps to prevent it. This liability extends to harassment related to any protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.

These measures build on the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, which introduced the initial duty to prevent sexual harassment from October 2024.

What this means for employers

Businesses face a major compliance shift. HR teams and legal departments are being advised to:

• Review and revise settlement agreement templates, employment contracts, grievance procedures, and dignity-at-work policies to remove or amend any clauses that could restrict protected disclosures.
• Update whistleblowing policies to reflect the new explicit protection for sexual harassment reports.
• Strengthen preventative measures, including risk assessments, training, and monitoring, ahead of the heightened “all reasonable steps” duty.
• Prepare for potential increases in tribunal claims, as workers feel more empowered to speak out. Some commentators note that extended time limits for certain claims (potentially from 3 to 6 months) could also be on the horizon.

While the government acknowledges that NDAs remain useful for protecting genuine business information, the reforms send a strong signal: they cannot be weaponised to suppress allegations of wrongdoing.

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