The Government has announced further plans to amend the law relating to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).   

It has barely been a month since new changes to the law regarding NDAs were introduced under section 17 of the Victim and Prisoners Act 2024. As we commented previously here, these changes means that individuals who have signed an NDA on or after 1 October 2025 and are victims of crime (or reasonably believe themselves to be so) will be allowed to make so-called ‘permitted disclosures’ to certain individuals for specific purposes even if the NDA seeks to prevent them from doing so. Further guidance on these changes was also published last month (on which we commented here). 

Despite these changes, the Government has announced that it intends to go further and remove the existing requirement that only certain disclosures can be made to certain persons in order to be permitted under the law. As the Government press release puts it, this will ensure that “victims and direct witnesses of crime – whether inside or outside the workplace – can share their experiences with anyone, for any purpose, including family, friends, employers and journalists, without fear of legal repercussions”.  

An amendment has been tabled to the Victim and Courts Bill to effect this change, which will repeal section 17 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 and replace it with a much simpler regime that states as follows:  

Any provision in an agreement is void in so far as it purports to preclude a victim, or a person who reasonably believes they are a victim, from making – 

(a) an allegation of, or a disclosure of information relating to, relevant criminal conduct, or 

(b) an allegation, or a disclosure of information, relating to the response of any other  

party to the agreement to – 

(i) relevant criminal conduct, or 

(ii) the making of an allegation or disclosure within paragraph (a).  

In its press release, the Government states that it recognises that in some situations both parties may “genuinely wish for confidentiality about certain cases”. To cater for this, the amendment includes a provision that empowers the Secretary of State to set criteria for and designate certain agreements as ‘excepted’ (although, according to the Government, this will be in “limited, legitimate circumstances”). The Secretary of State will also be entitled to specify where disclosures will always be allowed even in the case of an ‘excepted’ agreement. 

To read more, click here.