NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Colleagues, I apologise that I was a minute or two late. Unfortunately, I am disabled at the moment, and everything takes so much longer for me. As soon as I saw that it was a few minutes to 1 pm, I tried to make my way here in time.

I start by saying that I want to endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said. Like her, I have been a feminist all my life—but I am a lawyer, and I am here talking as a lawyer. I actually did the first international case representing a trans woman in relation to discrimination that she had received. As a result, I have had a number of cases since of some significance, relating to the violence that is experienced by trans women, also at the hands of men. Let us be very clear that this is not something that is experienced simply by biological women. The perception of womanhood itself can be enough to enrage certain men.

The judgment makes it clear that the decision was limited to the question of statutory interpretation and that it was not involved in making policy—so the difficult business of policy follows. But the judgment also made it clear, and it was emphasised—although unfortunately this has been lost in some of the utterances by people who should have known better—that its conclusion

“does not remove or diminish the important protections”

that there have to be for trans people and which are available to them under our own legislative commitments. The Supreme Court would probably be rather alarmed at the triumphalism that there seems to be about its judgment.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is required to publish proposals before issuing a new code of practice and to consult such persons as it considers appropriate. I hope that is going to be really broad, because we have not seen clarity brought by this. We have seen a great deal of dissension and a great deal of fear. I have been contacted by many trans women to say that they felt comforted by some of the legislation that there has been and that they are now full of uncertainty: “What happens if I am caught short at Waterloo station on my way home from work, wearing my female business suit?” That applies especially when we are talking about older women—and we all know that access to facilities can be so important. I am concerned about the consultation process, and I really want to see this being done in the health service as well. There should be opportunities for individuals and organisations to have input into that process—not just the loud voices that we hear and not just those who seem to be very partisan.

One of the things that came with feminism was a belief in our humanity and in the treatment and compassion that we should expect of each other. All that seems to be lost in the toxic debate that is currently taking place. I urge this on the House. I see that the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is here, and I would like to hear her being much more compassionate in how she discusses the rights of the trans community.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the new colleagues into this House and wish them well in their work as Members. I also congratulate the Minister on her introduction of this important piece of legislation. The world of work has changed and the expectations of workers, especially women, have also changed.

I very strongly endorse the speech made by the noble Baroness who bears the same first name as me, Helena—the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey. She discussed non-disclosure agreements, and I will endorse all she said about their misuse to silence complainants who have been sexually harassed or bullied, or who faced discrimination, in the workplace. It is a problem that has been expressed and exposed time after time in our press. As the chair of a number of inquiries, I have directly seen how it affects lives in the workplace.

Non-disclosure agreements undoubtedly have an important place in employment. It is a way of protecting the intellectual property of an employer; nobody should be making off with a client list or stripping a business of its suppliers or the magic ingredient in a product. There are good purposes for which an NDA can be used, but, too often, they are frequently used to preserve the reputations of the powerful inside an organisation against the interests of those at the receiving end of abusive behaviours.

This was opened up back in 2018, when a woman called Zelda Perkins publicly breached her non-disclosure agreement with Miramax over the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein many years before. She had been paid off because she had raised a complaint on behalf of another woman with whom she worked. She ran the London office of Miramax and a woman had gone, as part of her work, to the Venice film festival with Harvey Weinstein and he sexually violated her. Zelda Perkins reported this to the headquarters of Miramax in the United States and had hardly put the phone down before there was a great posse of lawyers on her doorstep wanting to see her. Immediately, she and the young woman who had been sexually abused were presented with non-disclosure agreements. Lawyers were brought in to advise them that this was a sensible thing for them to do. They signed away their rights and were given compensation and they rushed off into the world of work and were told to get on with life. The non-disclosure agreement stipulated that the two women could not discuss the allegations—not only with the general public or tabloid newspapers but with lawyers, doctors, therapists, counsellors or anybody else. This was particularly devastating for the woman who had been violated.

Zelda Perkins bravely breached that non-disclosure agreement. It was in the public interest. It was very important that she was able to tell the story of how she and her colleague were silenced. She wanted to provide corroboration and indeed did in the litigation that followed.

In the public interest, it is important that we visit this, and I would like to see it included in this legislation. Yes, there can be an exemption, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, said, because some victims do not want the exposure, and that has to be respected—but only where they have had the opportunity of good legal advice. I hope that this House, persuaded by the many feisty women and their male colleagues, will agree that the Government should include this in the Bill in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, described.