Blacklisting

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The debate has been well received, apart from the contribution by the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who made some disparaging remarks about a whole number of people which were totally and utterly outrageous. It is good to see that he is completely isolated. Hopefully, that will remain the case. I, for one, will not be rising to the bait. I am very proud to be a member of a number of trade unions, and to represent trade unions both in Parliament and in my constituency.

I welcome the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Business Secretary. I share his desire to end the obscene scandal of blacklisting. At Prime Minister’s questions, an issue was raised about the secrecy of the secret services and the police being involved in trade unions, blacklisting and other things. I was in a meeting this morning with representatives of the Shrewsbury pickets, who were on strike in 1972. Some were jailed and some died as a consequence, and they are still looking for justice. They have just received a letter from a Minister saying that even though it happened nearly 40 years ago, the papers relating to the case will not be released because it is a matter of national security. The individual concerned was Jim Royle—Mr Tomlinson—whose reaction to that was, “My arse!” That is a quotation from him, not from me—it is the way he is.

I merely highlight the point that there are interventions and happenings by the security services and the police with ordinary working people every day of the year. For the Secretary of State to suggest that we do not have any evidence, or that it might not be happening at this point in time, is pure poppycock. Of course it is happening. The reason why people are not rushing forward with evidence is that the evidence is not at hand. There might be people here who have been, and still are, on a blacklist, but they are not sure, so how can they come forward? The difference now is that recently, in the Scottish Affairs inquiry, a whole number of people have given evidence agreeing that not only have they been involved in blacklisting, but they have been operating blacklisting for a cost, to the detriment of thousands and thousands of people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) said that blacklisting goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. A little bit of research showed that, according to the “Henry Holt Encyclopaedia of Word and Phrase Origins”, the word “blacklist” originated with a list that England’s King Charles II made of 58 judges and court officers who sentenced his father to death. When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, some 13 of those executioners were put to death and 25 sentenced to life imprisonment. The others escaped. Times have changed, of course, which is not to say that some Government Members, perhaps the hon. Member for Keighley, agree that people on blacklists might be beheaded in the future. I am not suggesting that that is the case, however, and I will move on.

Some 400 years have passed since we had the 17th-century monarch taking away individuals lives; now we have 21st-century employers destroying people’s lives by denying them the opportunity to earn a living.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts about what the punishment should be for individual directors who, through their companies, fund the organisation of blacklists? Would he suggest that they be struck off as directors and barred from holding such office?

[Ian Lavery]

That is a very important question indeed, which I will come on to, if I get that far in my speech.

The blacklisting of trade unionists is an unfair and insidious practice that involves the systematic compilation of information about individual trade unionists by their employers and recruiters in order to discriminate against them, although not just because they are members of trade unions. There are people on blacklists who are not members of trade unions, but who have merely been to their employer and exercised their rights under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) said. If there is something wrong in the workplace, there is a duty under that Act to report it. As far as we are aware, people have suffered the consequences of doing that.

We are all very much aware of the information being discussed by the Scottish Affairs Committee. To be honest, I think it has been invaluable, because it has brought the issue to the forefront. For many years it has been hidden, but for the first time we now have real evidence. I believe that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham said, information will come forward after this debate for the Secretary of State to make some decisions on an inquiry. Some 3,600 files were seized by the Information Commissioner’s Office—files on politicians, academics, journalists, trade unionists and people who might just say, “Boo!” to their employers, who might not like it. There are many, many files. The Consulting Association’s blacklist, however, contained around 3,213 individuals and was used by more than 40 contractors, including most major UK construction firms, which vet individuals for employment.

A mass of information was left behind because it was not covered by any warrant. The information seized revealed that 40 of the biggest construction companies in Britain were drawn to paying money to find out who they should not employ. They included household names such as Taylor Woodrow, McAlpine, Balfour Beatty, Skandia and Carillion. To pick up the point my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) made, on its own admission, Carillion has had £2.5 billion per annum from public contracts, at the same time as placing ordinary citizens on blacklists and stopping them working. It cannot be allowed and it must be stopped as soon as practicably possible. From July to September 2008, McAlpine spent £12,839 making 5,836 blacklist checks—a total of 63 a day. That corresponded with McAlpine’s building of the Olympic stadium. How disgraceful can you get? A major company such as McAlpine penalising people for whatever, at the same time as having multi-million-pound Government contracts, is, as many people have said, absolutely insidious.

I believe we should perhaps go a little further than we have discussed today. I am obviously willing for more debate and discussion; indeed, if the Secretary of State is furnished with enough information, we should have a public inquiry into blacklisting on a par with Leveson. We need to call for those guilty of blacklisting not to be given any more public contracts until they apologise and compensate people and their families for blacklisting them. We definitely need a change in the law to make blacklisting a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment and unlimited fines. That would be a deterrent for blacklisting—that is something that we should be looking at and it should be in legislation. Carillion has been named. It is important that other organisations come clean, come to the fore, step up to the plate, erase the past, look to the future and stop blacklisting people, causing mayhem and financial distress to many, many people.

My heart gans out to them people who might be listening to this debate and thinking, “I’ve not had a job for many years; I wonder if I’m on the list,” and they cannot find out whether they are. Let us deliver a real result from this debate for those people, hopefully, as has been suggested—the Secretary of State says he has an open door—with the information we can bring forward. Let us hope that this is the first of many important debates to ensure that justice is seen to be done for those on blacklists and to prevent blacklisting in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), on demonstrating Labour’s solidarity with the construction industry by tabling the motion for today’s important debate. I also congratulate all Members who have spoken—with the obvious exception of the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who could not even be bothered to follow parliamentary convention and stay in the Chamber for two speeches after he had spoken.

After decades in which successive Parliaments have failed to rectify a national disgrace, we would not be here today without the solidarity, dignity and determination of the rank-and-file construction workers, whose spirit and tenacity in the face of adversity and hardship has been truly inspirational. I would like to place on record my gratitude to the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, which I first joined as a teenage apprentice bricklayer in 1979—[Interruption.] No, it was not child labour. UCATT has led the fight on behalf of construction workers for many decades.

In October last year, I tabled early-day motion 609, entitled “Blacklisted Workers”, which urged colleagues to support the call for justice for those placed on lists that prevented them from gaining or retaining jobs. To date, the early-day motion has received the support of 68 Members from six political parties. It should be pointed out, however, that not a single Conservative and only one Liberal Democrat bothered to sign it. Perhaps that will change after today’s debate, which has given us the chance to put clearly on the record whether we are on the side of insidious and immoral business practices or on the side of ordinary hard-working people.

Let me also declare an interest. Before coming to this place, I spent the best part of three decades working in the construction sector in one guise or another and saw first hand the effect that blacklisting had. Blacklisting is a national scandal, and recent revelations have demonstrated that the regulations introduced in the last decades did not go far enough.

I want to use my contribution to outline three things that I believe must now happen. First, I absolutely want to see all forms of blacklisting made illegal; secondly, I want to see criminal sanctions brought to bear against any individual or organisation that supplied, solicited or used blacklisting material; and finally, I want to see the introduction through primary legislation of a blacklisted worker’s right to compensation.

March 2009 proved to be a landmark moment for the construction industry. As we have heard, the ICO uncovered evidence against 44 companies—44 of some of the biggest companies in the industry—clearly showing that they were corrupt to the very core. They had purchased blacklists and used them to deny construction workers their legitimate right of employment. What made these revelations all the more devastating was that the companies that used blacklists were the same companies profiteering from millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money through public sector contracts.

How do we begin to end this scandal? It has to start by making blacklisting illegal. Looking specifically at the legislation that governs the rights of trade union members, we can clearly see that it does not offer adequate protection. First, section 137 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 makes it unlawful for an employer to refuse to employ someone because of his or her membership or non-membership of a trade union. The Act does not make blacklisting illegal.

Secondly, there is the Data Protection Act 1998—the Act eventually used to prosecute Ian Kerr, the man who ran the Consulting Association. It is unclear with this Act whether or not a person’s trade union activity qualifies as data in the same way as details of a person’s trade union membership number qualifies as data. The gap in legislation needs to be addressed, because until we amend the law explicitly to state that blacklisting is illegal, the Act will not adequately protect workers.

The third piece of legislation is the Employment Relations Act 1999, which empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations prohibiting the use or sale of blacklists. The last Labour Government did many things well—we improved the health and safety of construction workers, and their employment rights, more than any other Government in history—but, in my opinion, we missed the chance to end this scandal once and for all. I hope that the Secretary of State will learn from previous mistakes.

I shall have to leave out the next bit of my speech, because the time limit is down to six minutes, and after taking out four pages—I think I am finally there—

[Ian Mearns]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Steve Rotheram]

Of course.

[Ian Mearns]

I wonder whether, in the last couple of moments available to him, my hon. Friend has time to suggest what should happen to those who are guilty of using blacklists as part of their employment practice.

[Steve Rotheram]

I thank my hon. Friend for saving me.

I know from personal experience that those who found themselves on blacklists were the kind of workers who fought for a safer work environment for themselves and their colleagues. They were the kind of workers who did not turn a blind eye when the company tried to dock apprentices’ wages, or failed to pay the work force on time. What kind of Parliament would we be if we failed to stand up for responsible workers who have been punished by irresponsible companies for many years?

We should all remember that blacklisting was not an act of blissful ignorance, but an act of blatant immorality. It should never be allowed to happen again.