The Department also considered that workers’ willingness to report safety issues is correlated with their willingness to report other poor behaviour.89 We asked about Sellafield Ltd’s use of non–disclosure agreements–a previous Public Accounts Committee report noted that these agreements have been used elsewhere in the public sector to cover up failure.90 The NDA told us that “there may be occasional instances” – and subsequently informed us that Sellafield Ltd had signed 16 non–disclosure 84 C&AG’s report, para 3.17 85 Committee of Public Accounts, Investigation into whistleblowing in the civil service, Thirty–sixth Report of Session 2023–24, HC 457, 25 May 2024 86 Q 9 87 Qq 3, 40; Letter from the Group Chief Executive Officer at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority relating to the oral evidence session held on 20 March on Decommissioning Sellafield, 4 April 2025, page 4 88 Q 85 89 Qq 85–86 90 Committee of Public Accounts, Confidentiality Clauses and Special Severance Payments, Thirty–sixth Report of Session 2013–14, HC 477, 24 January 2014 21 agreements in the last three years.91 Additionally, the NDA made ‘special payments’ of £377,200 in 2023–24 to settle claims relating to employment matters.92 The NDA acknowledged that “there is more work to do across the group”, and committed to “continue to work them through and investigate where appropriate”.93 Both the NDA and Sellafield Ltd insisted that they were “not complacent” when it comes to addressing bullying and harassment.94