Blacklisting

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

This is a one-hour debate. As colleagues know, there will be five minutes for the two Opposition leads and 10 minutes for the Minister. If the contributions of Back Benchers were to end a little earlier, I would be inclined to allow six minutes to the hon. Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), but it may be just five.

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered blacklisting.

I should say at the outset that I am pleased that the Minister for corporate responsibility will respond to the debate, because, as she responded to the debate that I held in the previous Parliament earlier this year, she will be familiar with the issues.

For the benefit of the record in this Parliament, I want to recap what we are talking about. Imagine a person who has spent years acquiring the skills to work on construction sites around the country. No one ever complained about the quality of their work or their work ethic. They happen to be an active member of their trade union, keen to ensure that they and their colleagues have a safe and pleasant working environment—nothing out of the ordinary. Then, on one occasion, they raise a serious health and safety concern—no small matter, given that an average of 39 construction workers are killed at work every year in the UK—and ever since they have not been able to get work. That is what happened to thousands of construction workers for decades. They were blacklisted, and no one has ever been brought properly to book for it.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, far from being barred from employment, those people in construction who raised health and safety issues and have been blacklisted should be commended and saluted?

[Chuka Umunna]

Absolutely—I could not agree more. I will outline some of the things people have done and matters on which they have campaigned for justice. Blacklisting is the shady, underhand practice of sharing information on workers without their knowledge and then systematically denying them employment on the basis of that information. The practice first hit the headlines in 2009, when the Information Commissioner’s Office raided the premises of a disreputable organisation called the Consulting Association. When it raided that association, it found a blacklist of more than 3,000 construction workers. The association was funded and used for years by more than 40 of the country’s biggest construction firms to vet employees.

The association, set up in 1993, was the successor to another disreputable organisation called the Economic League, which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) will mention later. The construction companies fed the association detailed information about workers without their knowledge. Whenever the companies made hiring decisions, they checked applicants’ names against the association’s list. If they were on it, they were usually refused work—they were denied the abilityto do their job and provide for their family.

Essentially, the system facilitated systematic victimisation and denial of work simply because workers had raised legitimate health and safety concerns in the past or because they were a member of a trade union or a political party. It was, and still is, an outrage. The nature of some of the information held about people on the list—their religion, national insurance number, car registrations and so on—strongly suggests that the data were collected with the collusion of the police and/or security services. That is why it is entirely fitting that the Blacklist Support Group members, many of whom are here, have been granted core participant status in the Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing.

Those who suffered and are victims now have three principle routes of redress. The Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 now outlaw blacklisting, but they came into force too late for those who suffered at the hands of the Consulting Association. The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 stops people being discriminated against on the basis of being a member of a union, and the Data Protection Act 1998 can be used against those who abuse and misuse people’s personal data. The late Ian Kerr, who was chief officer of the Consulting Association, was fined a paltry £5,000 after the ICO’s raid because only later were fines levied under that Act substantially increased.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

My constituent Sandy Macpherson of Ilkley was one of the plaintiffs in the recent case. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is now a strong case for making blacklisting a criminal offence with strong sanctions, including big fines and possible imprisonment in the worst cases?

[Chuka Umunna]

I wholeheartedly agree. My hon. Friend talks about litigation, and in July 2014 Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and VINCI plc, which were all involved in blacklisting and in funding the Consulting Association, established a compensation scheme for individual workers affected by blacklisting and made an apology of sorts for what happened. However, their scheme was established unilaterally without agreement on the terms with the trade unions representing workers. Other firms that were part of the hall of shame involved with the association such as the Amec Group, Amey, BAM Construction, Morgan Sindall and Taylor Woodrow did not sign up to the scheme.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend knows, this is an important issue to me as I represented blacklisted members of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians in the High Court. Does he agree that no firm involved in historical blacklisting should be given a public contract until it demonstrates regret for its actions by supporting a public inquiry, offering retraining to victims and demonstrating that its recruitment processes are transparent and fair?

[Chuka Umunna]

I completely agree, and I commend my hon. Friend and the huge team of people who have worked on all the litigation we have seen in the High Court brought by a number of unions including UCATT— now part of Unite—which I am proud to say is headquartered in my constituency, and the GMB. Those unions deserve huge credit for the efforts they put into uncovering exactly what went on and then getting redress, working with my hon. Friend and others in the courts. Those cases have been settled in the past two years and millions have been paid, but the fact remains that not one director of the firms who funded the Consulting Association has ever been properly brought to book, fined or subjected to any individual court sanction for the misery they visited on construction workers over the decades. No one has been brought to book properly for that.

In fact, we are behaving as if all has been forgiven. Tears were apparently shed last month over the fact that we will not hear Big Ben’s bongs for several years. We should be far more concerned about the fact that Sir Robert McAlpine, a firm implicated in all of this, appears to have bagged a multi-million pound contract for the work that is to be carried out on Big Ben tower to fix those bongs.

Let us be clear about the role that the company Sir Robert McAlpine played. Cullum McAlpine, a director of Sir Robert McAlpine, was chairman of the Consulting Association when it was formed in 1993. Later, David Cochrane, the head of HR at that firm, succeeded him as chair of the association. During a hearing of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s inquiry into all of this in 2012, the late Ian Kerr, who died that year, admitted that his £5,000 fine for breaches of the Data Protection Act was met by Sir Robert McAlpine

“on the basis that I had put myself at the front and took the flak, if you like, for it all, so that they wouldn’t be drawn into all of this. They would remain hidden.”

How, in the light of that, can we parliamentarians sit here and say to the victims—many of whom are watching the debate in the Public Gallery—“It is an outrage”, while we stand by as Sir Robert McAlpine is awarded the contract to do the work on the parliamentary estate? There must be consequences when those who bid for public contracts are found to be involved in such practices. Will the Minister explain why on earth, given its disgraceful role in blacklisting, we are giving Sir Robert McAlpine the contract to fix the bongs of Big Ben, which so many parliamentarians have shed tears over?

I took up the blacklisting issue originally as a constituency issue, having been alerted to the scandal by my good friends at Unite; I took an even stronger interest when I was shadow Business Secretary, and I instigated the first full debate on the topic on the Floor of the House in 2013. As I have said, I instigated another debate on it earlier this year, because we must have a proper public inquiry into blacklisting, and the victims are continually denied it.

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

One of my constituents, Alan Wainwright, is a victim of blacklisting, and was party to exposing it—he was a whistleblower. He has submitted a file of evidence to the Minister’s office on the very point about the public inquiry. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should examine it seriously and in detail as part of the inquiry?

[Chuka Umunna]

I completely agree; I have met my right hon. Friend’s constituent. In the end, we need the inquiry because we need to know who knew what was going on. It was happening not just in the private sector but in the public sector. There are allegations that it was going on at the Olympic sites, Portcullis House and Ministry of Defence sites. Who knew it was going on? Did the permanent secretaries or the Ministers at the time know? Were the Departments that commissioned construction projects complicit in it? We do not know. Does the law need to be changed or tightened? To what extent is it still going on?

Each time we have debated the issue here the coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments have specifically refused to set up a public inquiry, saying that there is little evidence that blacklisting still goes on. Today I will present compelling evidence showing that the practice is definitely still going on, and that it is happening on one of the biggest construction sites in Europe—Crossrail, a publicly funded project that I have visited. Let us not forget that a construction worker died after being crushed by falling wet concrete, in March 2014, and that two other men were seriously injured in separate incidents in January 2015, working on Crossrail tunnels around the Fisher Street area in central London. In July this year the contractors concerned, BAM, Ferrovial, Keir— the BFK consortium—pleaded guilty to three offences following an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive, and were fined more than £1 million. The HSE said that had simple measures such as properly implemented exclusion zones in high-hazard areas been taken, all three incidents could have been prevented. That shows why it is so important that construction workers should feel free to raise health and safety issues without fear of retribution.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend outlines the human cost to the blacklisted workers and their families, which is almost the point that I want to make; but is there not also a sinister reason—intimidation of those engaged in legitimate trade union activity, to boost profits, often at the cost of the lives of a company’s own workers?

[Chuka Umunna]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: to what extent is profit being put before safety? Why is there such paranoia when employees and workers raise such issues? I find that hard to fathom, given the fatalities that occur in the construction sector.

The first case that I want to mention concerns surveillance of workers that took place at a peaceful demonstration at a Crossrail site in 2016. I have seen and read emails that passed and were circulated between contractors and the employee relations department at Crossrail, which detail questionable surveillance practices. The surveillance operations involved named individuals who were implicated in and involved with the activities of the Consulting Association. The evidence that I will supply to the Minister after the debate shows that a number of construction workers were being closely watched there, and that sensitive personal information was being collected in relation to them. It is not clear where those data were subsequently posited or by precisely whom, but those collecting information on the workers had to fill in a form, which was definitely filed somewhere.

Two of the workers who were subject to that surveillance have since sought to obtain further employment on Crossrail through employment agencies advertising positions. In each case they approached the job agency about the vacancy, and had the required skills to fill it. However, as soon as they relayed their names there was a delay; they were subsequently given an excuse as to why the positions had been filled. Unite does not believe that what happened to the two workers is coincidental, and it has already informed the Information Commissioner’s Office of its concerns about the case. Clearly, subcontractors were explicitly discouraged from employing certain known trade union members. One subcontractor has actually told Unite that the consequences of his employing a Unite member would be the refusal of future work. For obvious reasons, the subcontractor does not wish to disclose their identity.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, having been contacted about this, has stated that the evidence

“raises the possibility that surveillance is being undertaken without appropriate checks and balances being in place”

and that the

“collection of this type of data is potentially excessive”

under the law.

The second case that I want to highlight is that of an electrician who has been trying to obtain work in the construction industry since raising a grievance while working on Crossrail. He has since applied for hundreds of job vacancies, almost always being turned down. He never received any criticism about the quality of his work. He is an intelligent young guy, who is conscientious about his work and who takes his health and safety duties to himself and his colleagues particularly seriously. He is not particularly political: he is a construction worker and his focus is his work. He served Crossrail with a subject access request that compelled it to provide him with the information it held on him. I have been passed the documents and had a chance to read them. They reveal that Crossrail and three of its contractors exchanged personal data, and sensitive personal data, concerning the individual’s previous employment and the issues and grievances that he had raised there. On the face of it, the data appear to have been processed for the purpose of determining the individual’s suitability for employment related to his trade union activities. The very strong inference from the documents is that some kind of vetting operation was in operation between Crossrail, its contractors and the agencies involved. Again, I will pass the information and the documents to the Minister after the debate.

Those are just two examples, but clearly they show that blacklisting is still going on. I do not think that it is being carried out in the way that it was before, with a centralised system collectively funded by the construction companies, not least because for those caught under the data protection legislation there is a much bigger fine, and the blacklisting regulations are also in force, of course. However, clearly it is still being done, but in a more covert way, making it a lot harder to identify.

The ICO has said it will put out a call for evidence about ongoing blacklisting next year. It should really get on and put out the call for evidence now, without further delay; but it is no substitute for the public inquiry that we seek. The ultimate way to get to the bottom of what happened and is still happening is a proper investigation of that kind. The law clearly needs to be reviewed, even though the Minister told me earlier in the year that that was not necessary. I would like workers to be given a positive right not to be blacklisted. The suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan) that it should be made a criminal offence was well made. I would also like protection against blacklisting to be extended to include trade union-related activities, as opposed to the current definition, “trade union activities”.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we should commend the work of trade unions on the issue? The GMB, for example, has already secured £630,000 in my region of Yorkshire, but it is clear that there is more to do.

[Chuka Umunna]

That is absolutely right. All Members who have spoken or undertaken any activity on this issue would have found it much harder to do what we have done without the trade unions providing support and information and uncovering what happened.

I have to say to the Minister that I just do not understand why the Government and her Department are so resistant to having a public inquiry. What are they so afraid of? At the end of the 2010-15 Parliament, I made it very clear to her Department, which I was hoping to run after the 2015 general election, that, if Labour won that election, I would be giving instructions for the establishment of such a public inquiry. I was very clear on that to the permanent secretary. It can be done, it needs to be done and, above all, the thousands of people who have suffered need it to be done. At the same time that they need it to be done, those who were ultimately responsible for all of this have got off scot-free.

I have provided the evidence to the Minister orally—I will provide the documents so she can see them in detail —that this is still going on. To her and the Government, who claim to look out for the interests of workers, I say: put your money where your mouth is, deliver on the public inquiry and let us get justice for those who have suffered and those who are still suffering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chuka Umunna]

I am very grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, and for the powerful testimony that several have given. I will just say three things.

First, I welcome the Minister’s saying that she will press the Information Commissioner to do the call for evidence this year, not next year. I also welcome her saying—if I heard her correctly—that the Government will consider taking into account whether people were or are involved in blacklisting in relation to public procurement decisions going forward. That is most welcome.

Secondly, there are clearly good and bad sides to this industry. I have seen some of the good sides in my constituency during the past couple of weeks while visiting big construction sites, on Streatham High Road and the Clapham Park estate, that will make a positive difference to my community. However, this scandal exposes the ugly underbelly of the sector, which continues to go unaddressed.

I will wrap up by saying this to the Minister. She accepts that this practice is an outrage and has said that the Government take it seriously and are not complacent about it. I still fail to understand why she was not able to come here today and commit to a public inquiry. I do not understand what the Government are so afraid of. If it exposes embarrassing things for people politically that happened in the past, so what? Surely justice is the key here. That is how we prove that this Parliament is relevant. For all the bad press that this place gets, and given how disillusioned people are with the political process, at least with this we can illustrate that we deliver the goods and care about people, so I ask the Minister to please think again about doing a public inquiry. Do not be scared; just announce that you are going to do it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered blacklisting.