Blacklisting

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) made that final connection, because I did not think that such a comment would be made during the debate.

The Secretary of State asked: why have this debate now? My response is: at last. We as trade unionists—I am a member of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the GMB, and a former trade union organiser—have been campaigning on this issue, which we know has been going on, mainly in the construction industry, but possibly in many other industries too, for many years.

It is also important to note that it is almost exactly 100 years since Robert Tressell wrote “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”, which was based on poverty wages, people’s terror of losing their job, and conditions at work that were almost impossible to bear. It has descriptions of people literally dying at work in the construction industry because conditions were so bad. It is only as the result of the introduction of the trade union movement, which led to decent health and safety laws, that the kinds of conditions described in the book have, thankfully, stopped.

If we look at the effect of blacklisting—I want to widen the debate a little—we will see that it undermines every single one of those hard-fought trade union rights that we have won. It also undermines decent, good, honest people who go to work.

[Mr Anderson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that anyone who is blacklisted because they have raised health and safety issues is actually being blacklisted for carrying out a legal duty? Every employee who has a concern about a health and safety issue has a legal responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to report it. These people are not just being sacked, they are being refused access to work, so the problem is compounded by what employers are doing.

[Natascha Engel]

The one point that I want to make in my short speech is exactly that: not only are people raising legitimate issues; it is their legal duty to do so. Blacklisting is illegal, and it is illegal for a very good reason. Trade union organised workplaces are safer places to work, and for that reason, they are also more productive places to work. Blacklisting undermines every single one of those issues.

We need to remind ourselves of what the construction industry really is and what it means to be a construction worker. These are not office jobs; they are dangerous, risky jobs. People often work at great heights or with gas, electricity or asbestos, and they often have to travel miles away from home. It is insecure work, dependent on insecure contracts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, has said, people move away from their homes to get to these jobs and, once they are there, they do not know when they will get their next job. People are not paid much money for these jobs. Some are directly employed, but there is a system of bogus self-employment—of indirect employment through sub-contracting—which makes this a dangerous industry in which to work, and blacklisting only adds to that danger.

I want to build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) said about the Olympic village and the Olympic park. UCATT has proof that a different set of rules was applied to the Olympic park and the Olympic village. As has been said, in the main the park directly employed people on what were complicated construction jobs, and the number of accidents and injuries was far lower than that on the site of the Olympic village, which was arguably a far more straightforward site because it involved building housing. Sixty-six per cent. less people on the Olympic park suffered accident or injury than on the Olympic village, which had a system of sub-contracting and lots of casual labour. That statistic in itself demonstrates the importance of direct employment in the construction industry, and the importance of trade unions.

The Department of Trade and Industry, as it was in the good old days when Labour were in government in 2007, produced a report about health and safety representatives—this goes back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson)—stating that safety reps save the economy between £181 million and £578 million per annum. Even given the standards used by the Government and the comments of the hon. Member for Daventry, those are staggering savings for our economy. Trade union health and safety reps prevent between 8,000 and 13,000 workplace accidents. For trade unions to be present in the workplace is positive.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

A number of my constituents have contacted me about blacklisting, which unfortunately they have suffered from historically. There has been much debate about proof, and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that blacklisting is still going on with Crossrail. Unfortunately, however, unless there is an investigation, we will not be able to prove that as a fact. Will the Secretary of State please confirm that he will make a clear statement about High Speed 2, and ensure that no blacklisting is allowed?

[Natascha Engel]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has promoted me to Secretary for State for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and in that brief capacity I will confirm what she asks. This is a very important point. Blacklisting is terrible because it is clandestine and secret, and unless we have an investigation and inquiry into the practice, we cannot know how widespread it is. It must be rooted out, and my hon. Friend makes a very fair point.

A TUC report from 2011 looks at the productivity gains of trade union membership—I want to emphasise the positives of trade unions to the economy. The productivity gain to the UK economy as a result of trade union reps in the workplace was estimated at between £4 billion and £12 billion—absolutely staggering figures—and savings of between £82 million and £143 million in legal and recruitment costs. When looking at blacklisting we need to focus on the bad side of attacking the perfectly legal and important activity of someone being in a trade union and ensuring that people feel confident enough to report any health and safety risks at work, especially in a dangerous industry such as construction.

I will conclude by saying that blacklisting totally undermines the good work done in good faith by trade unions at work. Freedom of affiliation is a mark of our democracy. Blacklisting is not just illegal, it is completely anti-democratic. A construction worker’s life is hard enough already, and we must ensure that blacklisting stops once and for all, so that a hard life is not made unnecessarily harder still.