Blacklisting

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Jim McGovern

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree. Such practices are totally shameful.

Mr Kerr disclosed that after he was prosecuted and fined £5,000 for breach of the data protection regime in respect of the activities of the Consulting Association, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd paid the fine. Why did it do this? Not because David Cochrane, its head of human resources, was the chairman of the Consulting Association when it was shut down, although he was. No, the fine was paid by Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd because, as Mr Kerr told the Select Committee in November,

“I had put myself at the front and took the flak…so that they wouldn’t be drawn into all of this. They would remain hidden”.

Those involved cannot hide from the House today.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee and we took evidence yesterday from Cullum McAlpine, of Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. Mr Kerr’s widow put it to us that there was an instruction from David Cochrane that the money paid to Mr Kerr should be put into his daughter’s bank accounts so that it could be hidden.

[Mr Umunna]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and all the other members of the Committee for the fantastic work they have done on this issue. I was going to come to that exact point, as the fine that was paid was essentially, in some respects, hush money. That is how I would describe it. 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 I mentioned, 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, which I have already mentioned; Skanska UK plc; Taylor Woodrow Construction; and Vinci plc. Those are just a few of the companies listed. In fact, half of the 20 largest construction companies today and/or their subsidiaries were involved with the Consulting Association in 2009. They were charged a £3,000 annual fee for membership and then had to pay £2.20 for each blacklist check on a construction worker, which would be a drop in the ocean for them but would have severe consequences for the workers affected.

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[Mr Umunna]

I hope that the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) will reflect on those comments.

Let me give an example. An ex-scaffolder and father of four from Wigan on whom the association held information was, like my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton), unable to get work for several years. He said:

“this nearly ruined my marriage and it meant that my children were on free meals at school.”

Hon. Members who mentioned the impact on families were absolutely correct to do so.

Consulting Association invoices show that between 2006 and 2009, the construction companies involved paid just under £500,000 for blacklist checks and information. Given the amounts involved, it is inconceivable that the companies’ use and membership of the association would not have been known about and sanctioned at a senior level, yet so far, not one of the companies mentioned has apologised for its membership and use of the Consulting Association. That is an utter disgrace, given all that has come to light. The workers involved deserve an apology, and the companies involved should stop prevaricating and issue an apology now.

For the record, I should mention that when Mr Kerr gave evidence to the Committee, he confirmed the existence—this responds to the point made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford)—of a separate blacklist containing records on as many as 200 environmental activists, raising the possibility that there existed further, as yet unknown, blacklists relating to other sectors or groups that were being monitored.

[Jim McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—he has been very generous in taking interventions. It was not only construction workers—in fact, not only workers—who found themselves on the blacklist. Mr Syd Scroggie from Dundee—a disabled war veteran who lost a leg and the sight in both eyes while serving this country—found himself on the blacklist. Why? Because he sent a letter to the local press commending them for awarding Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city.

[Mr Umunna]

That is deeply shocking, and quite extraordinary. I thank my hon. Friend for adding that to the debate.

Unfortunately, in the past few months we have learned that blacklisting checks were carried out on workers who were to be engaged on publicly funded projects. In November, Mr Kerr submitted evidence to the Select Committee in which he stated that member companies used the association’s services to check potential employees applying to work on major public sector contracts. He said that the projects ranged from airport runways to buildings such as Portcullis House on the parliamentary estate, the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, GCHQ, the Jubilee line, the millennium dome, private finance initiative projects, hospitals, schools, Olympic sites, roads, rail contracts and so on. That is corroborated by an admission last month by Balfour Beatty in a letter to the Olympic Delivery Authority. Without the knowledge of the ODA, Balfour Beatty admitted that it had used the services of the association in 2008 to check 12 prospective Olympic workers who, thankfully, went on to be employed. It was also corroborated yesterday by Cullum McAlpine, who is a director of Sir Robert McAlpine Enterprises Ltd, and was the chair of the association from 1993 to 1996, and confirmed to the Select Committee that Consulting Association services were used on a large number of public projects, again including the Olympics and the Jubilee line.