Blacklisting

Debate between Lord Mann and Stephen McPartland

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Sir Alan, for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) on securing it and on her wonderfully impassioned speech. I will speak for only 10 minutes because, as she said, if hon. Members cannot say what they want to say in 10 minutes, they should not stand up. I shall try to learn from her vast experience.

Blacklisting is completely wrong. Not only does it destroy individuals, their confidence and their personality and who they are, but it destroys their family and prevents them from earning, working, contributing to society and being part of a wider whole. It is wrong for a variety of reasons, and I could wax lyrical on that. I know from my upbringing in Liverpool that blacklisting is a terrible disease, as the hon. Lady said, and must not be allowed to take root. It is illegal and should not be allowed in this country. I am proud that, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said, this country has always been good at welcoming people who have been blacklisted in other countries. I want to put it clearly on the record that blacklisting is completely wrong.

I shall focus my comments on the construction industry, but I will not refer to the case going through the courts at the moment, Sir Alan, as you asked us not to. There are 3,213 victims of blacklisting, and we are well aware that around 2,500 people on that database do not know that they are on it. Will the Minister impress on the Information Commissioner the need to contact them directly to make them aware of that?

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I found out that I was on the Economic League blacklist during the 1980s only when Ciba-Geigy Chemicals gave me a job but then withdrew it for no good reason. The list was published at an event at the university of London, and I found my name on it. How can there be any decency in society if people are on a blacklist, particularly if they have not found work? I was lucky because I was in work and kept work, but some people lose work or do not get it without knowing why because someone, for whatever reason, decided to put them on a list?

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Gentleman always makes powerful and impassioned points, and I agree with him. There can be no justice in society if people are on a blacklist without knowing. I urge the Minister to ask the Information Commissioner to contact those 2,500 people who do not know that they are on a blacklist and make them aware that they are.

I am not a member of any union, but with, I hope, the support of the GMB union and the hon. Member for Luton North, we will launch a cross-party campaign to contact the 44 construction companies that were involved in that blacklisting database, the idea being to ask them to apologise and to provide compensation. What we would ultimately like is for no one in the Government or local government to provide them with any public sector contracts or money until they have taken those actions.