Blacklisting

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Walker. May I first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) on his outstanding advocacy of a noble cause?

Trade unions are a force for good. To be denied work because you are a trade unionist is an affront to democracy. Blacklisting is not history; it is a scandal that has never gone away. Forty years ago, when I came out of the Grunwick strike, I was blacklisted by the Economic League. I was one of the 30,000 subversives, as they defined us at the time. I was out of work for a matter of months and then became an officer of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, but tens of thousands of others paid a very heavy price, some of them for decades. I then worked with The Guardian to expose the Economic League, leading ultimately to its demise, but it is absolutely scandalous that it was then reincarnated as another organisation, with the same practices.

It is absolutely scandalous that two generations on from the 1970s, we still have an industry—the construction industry—that has not learned the lessons of history and has not recognised that, as Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King’s College London has said, blacklisting is

“the worst human rights abuse in relation to workers”

in Britain in half a century.

Blacklisting has been outlawed, but the law is simply not strong enough. There has been some compensation for some of the victims of blacklisting, but it is not good enough, and that cynical manoeuvre was about companies trying to protect themselves from public scrutiny and escape their crimes being made public. No user company has been punished for blacklisting. No director has ended up in the dock, and that is completely wrong.

The scale of blacklisting over the years is tens of thousands of workers. There is a long history of Government, the police and construction firms acting in collusion and, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham, blacklisting is happening right now by major and allegedly reputable companies that enjoy enormous public contracts such as Crossrail and Big Ben. It is important to reflect on the human consequences of continuous blacklisting and we have heard powerful testimony of that today.

Workers take a pride in their work and define themselves through their job. The issue is self-worth and identity. To be out of work for years not quite knowing why and then discovering it was because they did nothing else but ask for a safe workplace is a scandal.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My constituent, Danny Regan was an electrician until he was blacklisted. He is not an electrician anymore and he still cannot work in that field because of the history of blacklisting. In supporting the call today for a public inquiry, does my hon. Friend agree that it should address the legacy of the impact of what happened in the past?

[Jack Dromey]

Without hesitation, I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will come to that.

Over the years, hundreds of individuals have been blacklisted and I will give one example today. Dave Smith, joint secretary of the Blacklist Support Group, became virtually unemployable as a consequence of his file, which was first held by the Economic League and then by the Consulting Association. It was 36 pages long and stretched from 1992 to 2007, from his very first job with Balfour Beatty all the way through successive employment. His sin with Balfour Beatty was to take part in a dispute about unpaid wages. His file included personal information, including address and national insurance number, but also details of his wife and brother. That is an affront to democracy and the rights of working people, and demands further action. Members today were absolutely right when they said we need first and foremost a public inquiry into blacklisting, its use in the past, its current use, steps going forward to eradicate blacklisting, the role of the special demonstration squad, the role of the Consulting Association, and examination of evidence of blacklisting in publicly procured contracts. The truth needs finally to be fully told.

Secondly, we must strengthen legislation to stop the continuing practice of blacklisting and criminalise it. We must also ensure that the law is not limited to employment relationships because, by definition, if a worker is blacklisted he or she does not have an employment relationship. As Unite has argued, we must also tackle patterns of work generally in construction, such as bogus self-employment. The argument is that 10 million workers are in insecure employment where employers can abuse without fear, and blacklisting very often follows.

Thirdly, we need strong rules covering Government contracts awarded to firms complicit in blacklisting. There must be consequences for blacklisting. It is a scandal that the Big Ben contract has gone to McAlpine, one of the first blacklisting offenders. I suspect that we here do not give a damn about the Big Ben bong, but we give a damn that that firm, which blacklisted workers and treated them shamefully, has an iconic contract just yards from where we are.

We need effective action, including at local authority level. I particularly praise Liverpool for its social value charter, which refers to respect for all individuals and does not engage in any form of discrimination or blacklisting practices—in other words, an unmistakeable message must be sent and enforced that a company suspected of blacklisting does not get public contracts.

Fourthly, we must make sure that specific laws banning blacklisting and data protection are retained after we leave the European Union.

In conclusion, as we have heard today, blacklisting is not history. We must learn from the lessons of history and ultimately confine blacklisting to history. That is why we need a public inquiry, strengthening of the law and absolute clarity that companies do not get public contracts if they blacklist. The time has come to blacklist the blacklisters.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, may I ask her to leave a minute or two at the end for Mr Umunna to sum up?

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman on that matter. We expect high standards of corporate governance for major contracts awarded by the Government. If there is evidence of companies acting in the present day in not only a disreputable but a potentially illegal manner, that will be taken into consideration.

[Jack Dromey]

To press the Minister further on that point, we have heard powerful evidence today in relation to both Crossrail and Big Ben. Does she agree that if there is evidence of complicity in blacklisting, the companies concerned should not get public contracts until such time as they have remedied the bad practices of the past and, indeed, the present?

[Margot James]

The shadow Minister makes a very reasonable point, which I will consider further. I think there is nothing to disagree with in what he has said.

We want to build on the work already undertaken by the Information Commissioner’s Office looking at profiling and big data analytics. The Information Commissioner’s call for evidence, once complete, will be the most recent and authoritative source of data that we have. I can assure hon. Members that the Government will consider the evidence collected and the report on it very carefully indeed.

I want to acknowledge the request from the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson). I have indeed received correspondence from Mr Alan Wainwright. I have looked at it briefly and will examine it thoroughly. The right hon. Gentleman also asked me to look again at the situation with regard to the Shrewsbury 24, and I will write to him on that subject as well.

The Government will continue to take a very close interest in this matter. If the Information Commissioner finds any evidence of current blacklisting, perpetrators can expect to feel the full force of the law, and I am sure—to go back to the shadow Minister’s intervention—that that would have implications for contracting as well. In the meantime, in the absence of clear, strong and compelling evidence to the effect that blacklisting is widespread, we remain of the view that the blacklisting regulations, alongside the proposed changes to the data protection rules, are appropriate and robust tools— the increased fines and accountability are further disincentives—to counter this abhorrent and illegal practice.

I urge all hon. Members to talk to their constituents who raise these matters with them and to the trade unionists in their constituency who have been affected, and to use the call for evidence as a means of exposing any current practice that might be continuing, so that we can eradicate this appalling abuse of people’s human rights at work once and for all.