I was unemployed for nearly 6 months and job searching wasn't going well so I started applying for lower level roles just to have an income of some sort. I landed a junior position in a small local company that barely pays above minimum wage when I'm very much not junior (10 years in the job market doing what I do) and was earning close to £40k at my last gig, but a job is a job and it's better than being exclusively on UC. I started yesterday and was reading the employee handbook when a section caught my eye. It said that pay discussions or questions should be raised with the finance manager and employees are expressly forbidden from discussing pay with one another. It then adds that any raises an employee may have received will be reversed should they find that you'be been discussing your pay with other employees.

Obviously this is mega illegal. I flagged this to my team leader who wasn't aware this was against the law and had just waved it off as yet another quirky rule the company has (another rule in the handbook is you can't wear a specific clothing item to the office because "the CEO doesn't like it"). He's not had a proper office job before this one, he started less than a year ago as an entry level employee and he's just been promoted to team leader a few months ago. I can see he's got his heart in the right place; he's thinking of a way to flag this newly found information with finance or HR without "rocking the boat".

There's been a few red flags about this place but this was the nail in the coffin and I'm going to ramp up my job search to get the hell out asap. Has anyone ever gone through this before? What would you do in my position?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for the helpful comments, advice and opinions. I'm not going to raise it internally nor did I really plan to; it won't do me any good and I can't afford to lose the job without anything else lined up. But I was still curious to hear other people's thoughts and it's been interesting to learn more about how or why banning pay discussions between employees may or may not be unlawful depending on the situation.

I have a small update on the situation: my team leader told me he researched this topic at home after work and more or less found the same thing we did, that writing this rule down in the handbook isn't unlawful but enforcing it is. I then questioned the point of having the rule in the first place if that's the case and he shrugged and said there must be a good reason for it, even though he can't think of one. And that was it. So he's either drank all the Kool Aid, or he's in complete denial, or he's just that gullible. tbh I don't know which is worse.

Wish me luck! I have a feeling the next few months are going to be, at the very least, interesting.