Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman knows that we have set out £557 million to support all renewable technologies over the next few years. We want to make sure that we decarbonise at the right price for taxpayers and bill payers, which is one reason why the mechanism will continue.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

One way in which the Government could invest in economic growth while decreasing emissions would be to invest in the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project. They have flip-flopped over the past 10 days, with leaks about when the announcement will or will not be made. May I press the Minister? Can she please tell us when she will deliver that major economic investment for Wales?

[Claire Perry]

Having grown up on one side of the Bristol channel and seen the second-highest tidal range in the world on an almost daily basis, I will take no lessons on the value of tidal and marine technology. As guardians of public money, it is absolutely right that we make investments that deliver the right decarbonisation and the right value for the taxpayer. The hon. Gentleman should not rely on leaks and assume that they are Government information. That announcement will come in due course and the House will be the first to know.

Sainsbury and Asda Merger

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend can hear for herself the support that there is in the House for the suppliers, growers and farmers in her constituency.

Let me clarify one issue. I did not say that I had spoken to the NFU; I said that I had urged both Sainsbury’s and Asda to engage with the NFU to understand the position properly. As I have said, the CMA will be concerned about the impact on the supply chain, but, just as important, the Groceries Code Adjudicator will also be there to champion the small producers to whom my hon. Friend has referred.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Sadly for the Minister, here is another question from a Member who started his working life in a supermarket—luckily, probably, only as a butcher in Tesco, but there we are.

Does the Minister agree that it is unacceptable to keep workers waiting until 2019 for certainty about their jobs, as indicated in the CMA’s statement? What will he do to try to improve the process as soon as possible?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I can honestly say that Tesco’s loss is the House’s gain.

I recognise that this is an uncertain time for workers—that is why we have engaged with the unions to try to give them as much reassurance as we can—but this is clearly a complicated and complex process. These are huge businesses, and we need to understand properly the impacts that the merger will have—not just on jobs in those businesses, but on the supply chain and competition throughout the country. While I am keen for us to secure a resolution as quickly as possible, I think that, unfortunately, we must let the process run its course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Higher Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I will make three quick points: the Government are investing £70 million in the agri-tech catalyst and £80 million in four centres for agricultural innovation through the 2013 agri-tech strategy; and I pay tribute to Rothamsted Research as a key partner in agrimetrics. We are working together to deliver integrated solutions for the agricultural community.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

T5. On 10 January, the First Minister of Wales sent a letter to the Prime Minister offering substantive funds for the tidal lagoon. When will he get a response and when will we have the tidal lagoon decision for investment across Wales?

[Greg Clark]

Officials are meeting their counterparts in the Welsh Government so that they can understand and explore the proposal that has been made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend has made an excellent point. Part of the programme involves test beds to demonstrate the new technologies. The demonstrations will be open to the public so that they can see for themselves, and they will begin in Milton Keynes, Greenwich, Bristol and Coventry. However, people are already experiencing these technologies through satnav, cruise control and automatic parking, and I hope that increasing exposure will reveal their benefits.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned Jaguar Land Rover. As he will know, Ford in Bridgend, which neighbours my constituency and employs hundreds of workers there, is pulling out of the contract early. Has the Secretary of State had any conversations with Ford about the possibility of converging its lines to produce electric batteries for electric cars?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that I shall be meeting the head of Ford’s European operations immediately after this session to discuss the fact that Ford has based its new development of electric and autonomous vehicles in Britain.

Industrial Strategy

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am always keen to meet people from the ceramics industry and from Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area. It is a fantastic industry for the future as well as the present—great strides are being made. It is an endorsement of the approach in the Green Paper of asking whether we should have sector deals that there was such an emphatic yes that some sectors, including ceramics, submitted their own proposals, and I am keen to take them forward.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Secretary of State is aware that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for the coalfield communities—if he was not, he is now—and the group has done significant work on trying to look at the regeneration of such communities. In relation to the White Paper, how does he intend to bring jobs and investment to those communities, which have suffered over successive generations in terms of job losses, economic growth and, indeed, health outcomes?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The White Paper contains a substantial section on the importance of local places and the role they can play in reviving their economies. It looks in particular at establishing local industrial strategies that are not only about the big cities, but about smaller towns and communities. The strategy presents an opportunity to former coalfield communities and others to play a big role in helping to drive up their future prospects.

Tuition Fees

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am really trying to make this debate constructive, instead of ping-ponging who said what. It should be about what the young people and students of today expect of us. They are telling us that the current debt levels are unsustainable, and they clearly are unsustainable.

Conservative Members say all the time that a record number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university. If only that was the whole story. The evidence shows that students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are the most likely to be deterred by debt.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that something different is happening in Wales, with the implementation of the Diamond review? It is moving back to a grant-based system, so the vast majority of students will receive a full grant and support for living costs, which is something that the National Union of Students and various other student union bodies have called for. That shows that there can be a different way. That is the difference between having a Labour Government in Wales and a Tory Government in England.

[Angela Rayner]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will have pre-empted some of the interventions from Conservative Members, who like to say that the Welsh Government are not doing things right. Of course, the Welsh Government have invested in their young people. They believe that their young people are the future of the Welsh economy. I congratulate them on making those decisions. Of course, the Welsh Government make decisions about education—before I get an intervention about what Wales is doing about loans.

As I was saying, burdening students with more than £50,000 of debt means that we will see more disadvantaged young people not going to university. After all, we have seen that at many of the most prestigious universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the number of disadvantaged students is falling.

Cavity Wall Insulation: Wales

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams]

I am afraid that the picture the hon. Gentleman paints is all too common, especially in Wales but also in parts of the north-west of England. For example, people from Blackpool have travelled all the way to Bangor and Caernarfon to see me to explain the difficulties that they have had in areas where cavity wall insulation has been installed without explanation and there is wind-driven rain, which is the danger.

I welcome the long-awaited report of the Bonfield review entitled “Each Home Counts”, which was released on 16 December last year; some hon. Members may have seen it. A review was first considered by the then Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), on 3 February 2015, during the second debate we had on the issue. I spoke in that debate and expressed my concern about the attitude towards victims of cavity wall insulation of some in the insulation industry and the official bodies that allowed this to happen.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about this issue with great authority and passion for his constituents and people across the UK. My constituent Sarah Morgan recently discovered that she had two different CIGA guarantees for her property—one with a clause detailing the homeowner’s responsibility for property maintenance and one without. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that subtle change is being used by CIGA as nothing more than a get-out clause?

[Hywel Williams]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is blessed with clairvoyance, because I was going to raise that matter. It is extraordinary that the maintenance clause is in the small print, as I understand it, and then suddenly reappears in the rather fancy guarantee as a separate and prominent item of its own. I should imagine that had people—especially older and perhaps disabled people—been aware that they had to maintain the house to a high standard, a lot of them would not have gone in for cavity wall insulation in the first place. That has certainly been my experience with the many cases that I have come across.

This matter has been raised on numerous occasions by cross-party alliances, supported by the tireless work of the victims’ support group, the Cavity Insulation Victims Alliance. I am glad to have this opportunity to commend CIVALLI’s work, which it does with virtually no resources. It communicates the distress of consumers who reach out to it, dismayed at the effects of cavity wall insulation, the process through which it was sold and installed, and the attitudes of bodies that were set up to protect them. Its efforts have resulted in this matter being brought to the forefront of the political agenda, a “better late than never” review and some positive steps.

As CIVALLI and I rather expected having met Paul Bonfield, the review focuses on recommendations for future cavity wall insulation but does not place responsibility or blame for redress or provide compensation for those who have been disadvantaged. The review is forward looking, and quite reasonably so, but our concern is with the large number of historical cases.

The review underlines some positive progress. The British Board of Agrément and CIGA have launched a scheme whereby property assessments are independently reviewed for compliance with industry specifications to ensure that cavity wall insulation installations are carried out only on suitable properties. It strikes me, though, that the review’s publication and the progress made so far is much too little, much too late. I might say that the Titanic, alas, is already going down.

My concern is about the millions of homes already treated with cavity wall insulation, a proportion of which are problematic. I do not know what that proportion is, and it seems that no one else does either, for that matter. We do not know how many there are or where they are, but it is clear that cavity wall insulation has been installed in properties unsuitable due to their location, the size of the cavity, the state of external walls, rendering or pointing.

My constituency, Arfon, is in the category 4 area; in fact, much of west Wales is category 4, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) noted. When I raised this issue with the then Under-Secretary in the debate in February 2015 and asked her whether cavity wall insulation should have been installed in these areas, her response was:

“My recollection is that mostly it should not have been.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2015; Vol. 592, c. 20WH.]

That is as clear as can be: it should not have been put in, but it was. Installers, CIGA, manufacturers of cavity wall insulation, Governments and everyone seemed to claim that insulations were preceded by a full assessment of the suitability of the property. I am yet to see an assessment report, and seriously wonder whether such reports exist in any real sense.

In my experience, installers failed to take customer complaints seriously and to provide adequate redress. There seems to be a culture of avoiding customer queries, not responding at all, failing to provide full answers to straightforward questions and denying liability. I have heard people say so many times that they were told that it was just condensation—“Open a window and let all that expensive heat out; we’ll sell you some more”, presumably.

Extraction of failed cavity wall insulation is only one element, and most customers will not be offered even that. In my opinion, customers should also be able to recover costs for interior and exterior damage due to the poor installation and extraction, plus compensation for the distress caused. When I have talked to CIGA, it has said—quite reasonably, I think—that it is a guarantee scheme, not a compensation scheme. However, people have suffered, and they deserve compensation.

Many people complain that they signed up for cavity wall insulation only because they were explicitly told that it was a Government-backed scheme, and they feel that the Government should take responsibility for putting things right. In fact, I have seen a sales video that, after about eight minutes of hard sell, has a prominent TV personality saying clearly that it is a Government scheme. Now, he is a salesman and a television personality, but people took him at his word.

We know that CIGA proffered a 25-year guarantee but, again, that guarantee was worth little to most people after it became clear that there was not a suitable system of quality assurance for installers. Indeed, that was a matter I took up with the previous Minister.

Construction Industry: Blacklisting

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She, too, must be telepathic. Not only am I a member of Unite and the GMB, and proud to be so, but UCATT, which is now part of Unite, is headquartered in the centre of the universe: my constituency. The work that the unions have done is so important. I practised for almost a decade as an employment law solicitor before being elected by my constituents and I have seen injustice in the workplace, but I have never seen injustice on this scale.

The extent of the blacklisting activity in the construction sector was exposed for all to see following the raid in 2009 by the Information Commissioner’s Office on the shadowy and secretive organisation called the Consulting Association. Further details emerged in the last Parliament, during an excellent and extensive inquiry into blacklisting carried out by the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) mentioned the work of the unions, and a lot of the evidence provided to that Select Committee was provided by those trade unions, which also worked with the ICO, as well as by the blacklisting support group.

The Consulting Association was born out of a right-wing organisation called the Economic League, which was set up in 1919 to promote free enterprise and to fight left-wing thinking, to which it objected. That included Members of this House. The former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had information collected on him. The league, which blacklisted more than 10,000 people, was wound up in 1993, but its construction sector member companies wanted to continue this unforgivable practice and its activities, so the Consulting Association was born.

According to the Information Commissioner, 44 construction companies made up the hall of shame that was the membership of the Consulting Association at the time of the 2009 raid, including five companies in the Amec group, Amey Construction Ltd, six Balfour Beatty companies, BAM Construction Ltd, Carillion plc, Kier Ltd, Laing O’Rourke Services Ltd, Morgan Est and Morgan Ashurst, which are now known as Morgan Sindall, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, Skanska UK plc, Taylor Woodrow Construction, and VINCI plc —to name just a few of the companies listed. In 2009, half of the 20 biggest construction companies were all named as being involved in the association.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)]

Skanska has a base in Pencoed in my constituency. It blacklisted more than 111 workers or families. Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning that company for its actions? I echo any statement that he makes calling for a public inquiry, which I fully support.

[Mr Umunna]

I completely endorse my hon. Friend’s comments. Let us put what the Consulting Association was doing into context. It did not just maintain lists and files on thousands of construction workers; the material that it collected included personal information, such as information on workers’ private relationships, in addition to whether they had raised health and safety issues, their trade union activities and so on.

It is worth reflecting on this: member companies were charged a £3,000 annual fee to be part of the Consulting Association and then had to pay £2.20 on top of that for each blacklist check on a construction worker. For the cost of £2.20, the association would be able to dictate whether a worker got a job and whether they could put food on the table that week. Worse still, taxpayers’ money was being used to inflict that misery on people. Blacklisting checks were carried out on workers on publicly funded projects, ranging from airport runways, the Jubilee line, the millennium dome, hospitals, schools, roads and Portcullis House on the parliamentary estate—I could go on.

In addition to the blacklist checks, David Clancy, the Information Commissioner’s investigations manager, who carried out the raid in 2009 and is himself a former police officer, gave evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee that he believed that some of the information held by the association would have come from the police or security services, because of the nature of that information. I mentioned the private information that was collected—for example, one file features an in-depth analysis of an individual’s home circumstances and what his neighbours thought about him. I have seen some of those records, and it is clear that they contained information based on the surveillance of individuals away from construction sites. It is improbable that such information came exclusively from the construction firms themselves.

What about the legal protections for construction workers and the system of redress for victims? Although it was and remains unlawful to refuse employment on the grounds of trade union membership alone, at the time of the 2009 raid on the Consultancy Association there was not a specific prohibition on blacklisting. Following the raid and the emergence of the blacklist, the Labour Government acted to outlaw blacklisting and introduced the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010, which allow individuals to bring civil claims against those found guilty of blacklisting in employment tribunals. If successful, that can lead to compensation of between £5,000 and £65,300. However, the regulations were not retrospective, and there is no criminal sanction. In truth, I believe the Labour Government should have acted much earlier, because that was too late for many victims.

Perhaps more shocking still is the fact that the firms that set up the association and supplied the information to and accessed the blacklist were neither charged with any offence nor ordered to pay compensation to the workers. To date, not one director of any of those companies has been brought to book for what happened. That is an outrage.

In October 2013—shortly after we had the debate on this issue in the main Chamber—a number of construction firms announced that they intended to establish a compensation scheme for workers who had been blacklisted. On the surface, such a move should be welcome, but there are many problems with the Construction Workers Compensation Scheme. It was brought together without reaching prior agreement with the trade unions—which, as I said, have been absolutely critical in all this—and it provides inadequate compensation. Applicants to the scheme are required to waive any future legal claims, and the companies involved do not have to admit liability or give an apology as part of the process. In fact, the workers were able to get a public apology only by dragging the construction firms kicking and screaming through the courts. I again pay tribute to the Blacklist Support Group, some of whose members are here today, which secured an apology from the firms involved in the Consulting Association in the High Court, although many victims feel that the apology was half-hearted and insincere.

Serious questions remain about the role of the police services in the collection and passing of information to the Economic League and the Consulting Association. I know that the undercover policing inquiry chaired by Sir Christopher Pitchford has said that blacklisting is potentially a matter within its scope. That is welcome, but not enough. It should be within the scope of that inquiry. There are many unanswered questions, and we cannot let this matter go.

What am I asking for from the Minister? Let me deal with the law first. As cases have progressed through the courts, it has become apparent that the blacklisting regulations need to be strengthened. For example, the extent to which it is possible for those who are not employed in the strict sense of the word but are self-employed to bring claims under the regulations if they have been refused work is unclear. That is important, because we know that full self-employment is an endemic problem and is rampant in the construction sector. Claims can be brought in employment tribunals or county courts, but the cap on compensation in a tribunal is £65,300. There is no cap in a county court, but to bring a claim in a county court there are added risks for a potential claimant because of the costs involved, and they need more resources. It is easier to do it in an employment tribunal, as there are not the costs consequences, but the claim has to be brought within three months of the alleged unlawful conduct, and sometimes people who have been blacklisted do not realise it for some time.

The upshot of all that is that the only legal remedy for some is a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, based on the right to privacy in article 8 and the freedom of association in article 11. For all those reasons—I could go on, but I will not go back to being a lawyer and bore people—the Secretary of State needs to carry out a review of the law in this area to look at how it might be tightened up.

The second issue is public procurement. I want the Government to adopt the Scottish Affairs Committee’s recommendation that all UK Government agencies and devolved Governments must require firms that have been involved in blacklisting to demonstrate how they have “self-cleaned”, as the Committee put it, before being allowed to tender for future public contracts. Those that have not done so should not be allowed to tender. The Welsh Government have introduced that measure, and I think it should be introduced across the whole of the UK.

There are lots of unanswered questions. Pitchford does not pick up on all of them, and nor do the cases we have seen. Were the intelligence services involved? We need a full public inquiry into this issue because people have not seen justice and we do not know exactly what happened. We cannot allow a climate of fear to hang over our construction sites. No worker on any building or in any other workplace up and down this land should hesitate before reporting an unsafe site or a dangerous working situation. The bottom line is this: if people do not report their concerns and do not highlight dangers, people could lose their lives, so this issue is very serious indeed. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the gas capacity market auction was an enormous success. It secured a widespread diversity of supply at low cost and in higher amounts than ever before, and it included some innovative new technologies. The Department should be celebrated for managing this.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. When the joint Steel Council next plans to meet.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)]

The Steel Council will next meet in the new year. I will also meet senior steel industry chief executives and the trade union steel committee next month.

[Chris Elmore]

I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in congratulating all those involved in the Save our Steel campaign—especially the Community, GMB and Unite trade unions—on their vital contribution to the recent announcement on Port Talbot and other steel sectors across the UK. I am sure that he agrees that it is trade unionism at its best. Thousands of steelworkers and their families can look forward to a more certain 2017, but one of their real concerns remains their pensions. What will he do to bring forward better plans to ensure that steelworkers’ pensions, as well as their jobs, are protected?

[Greg Clark]

I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in welcoming and congratulating the workforce, trade unions and the employers on their very constructive set of discussions. It is important that the membership is consulted, but this is a positive step forward and he is right that this will provide greater comfort to employees this winter. The hon. Gentleman will know that it is right and proper for the independent Pensions Regulator, rather than the Government, to approve and be content with pensions arrangements. It would be wrong for the Government to intervene in that.