Blacklisting

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Alan; it is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship. I am one of the few Members to have absolutely no legal training whatever, so the possibility of my uttering anything that could be deemed to be sub judice is fairly remote. I do wish, however, that I had selected a rather less bland title for this afternoon’s debate, because we are looking not so much at the practice of blacklisting, but at the illegality and abhorrence of blacklisting.

In common with many of my colleagues over the years, I have had constituents at advice surgeries alleging that they have lost their jobs, or had their career prospects blighted, because of blacklisting. At one time, it was extremely difficult to prove such allegations. In light of your introductory remarks, Sir Alan, I hasten to add that my constituents were not laying the allegations at the door of the construction industry. In my memory, blacklisting could go throughout the employment world, but it was extremely difficult to prove any allegations. Silly me, I thought that when the regulations under the Employment Relations Act 1999 making blacklisting illegal came into effect in 2010, such visits from constituents would end.

One must, nevertheless, pay tribute to all those who, inside and outside the House, worked to bring about what we thought would be safeguards under the 1999 Act. I also pay tribute to those who—again, inside and outside the House—have consistently, and certainly for more than a year, raised the issue of allegations of blacklisting through debates, early-day motions and questions to Ministers. Most recently, some of those against whom the allegations have been most cogently presented have indicated some kind of acceptance—I would not go so far as to say “apology”—that something untoward had been going on.

In my previous work, many of my colleagues—most markedly in the United States of America, and rather less in the United Kingdom—suffered egregiously from someone we could call the godfather of blacklisting, the nefarious Senator McCarthy. His reasons for condemning people as scaremongers and a danger to the body politic and the life of all democratic societies were overtly political.

Blacklisting, however, can be compared to an infectious disease—it spreads much further than the initial target. Only this morning, I heard from someone who had blown the whistle. She was a care worker, and she blew the whistle on her place of employment, because she found the treatment of those in her care totally unacceptable. Her whistleblowing brought some results, and I believe that that particular care home closed down—this was a few years ago and is not a contemporary case; it is a scandal that we all know about. She said, categorically, that she became unemployable. That is the running theme of all blacklisting allegations—that those who have been blacklisted are deemed by someone in authority to be, in essence, troublemakers; it is a little like David and Goliath. They would be dangerous to employ, because they might cause any commercial project some kind of egregious, usually financial, damage. Nine times out of 10, however, such people are actually attempting to ensure greater safety in their work areas.

Looking back at my previous work experience, I see that the creative people named by Senator McCarthy were not the only ones affected; their creative lives were cut off at the knees, but, in addition, the benefits of their creative work were no longer available to the wider community. That is why blacklisting is like a particularly infectious disease, which can spread far wider than only among those who know themselves to have been blacklisted in those industries or professions in which we know that blacklisting has existed, or possibly still exists. That is why I pay tribute to everyone inside and outside the House who has brought the issue forward.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Last year, with the help of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, I tabled an early-day motion on this important issue. Does she agree not only that the practice is a disgrace and a stain on the country, but that the people who were blacklisted are the very ones who should have been praised for what they were doing to assist fellow workers? The companies that indulged in such dark practices should be held accountable and made to pay for ruining the lives of many thousands of construction workers.

[Glenda Jackson]

I strongly concur. The stain of being blacklisted and accused of being in some way not committed, whether to the job, the company or the venture, can even spread to members of an individual’s family. I have heard stories of small children being called names by their contemporaries, because their mother or father had been deemed to be working against the industry or profession.

I endorse what my hon. Friend said, but we should now be pushing, most markedly, for the Government to institute a full inquiry into such practices, as previously requested. We thought that we were safe and that blacklisting was illegal—it is there in an Act of Parliament—but now, given reports in this country’s major newspapers and hon. Members’ questions and early-day motions, the problem clearly needs to be re-examined.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Gentleman always makes powerful and impassioned points, and I agree with him. There can be no justice in society if people are on a blacklist without knowing. I urge the Minister to ask the Information Commissioner to contact those 2,500 people who do not know that they are on a blacklist and make them aware that they are.

I am not a member of any union, but with, I hope, the support of the GMB union and the hon. Member for Luton North, we will launch a cross-party campaign to contact the 44 construction companies that were involved in that blacklisting database, the idea being to ask them to apologise and to provide compensation. What we would ultimately like is for no one in the Government or local government to provide them with any public sector contracts or money until they have taken those actions.

[Steve Rotheram]

The hon. Gentleman is making really important points. There seems to be cross-party consensus on trying to contact everyone on the list, many of whom do not know they are on it. Would he support a call by UCATT and other unions for a public inquiry into the scandal?

[Stephen McPartland]

I often agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I reserve judgment on a public inquiry. We have had the result of the Leveson inquiry and no one is sure what the outcome is, and I am keen to get justice for the 3,213 individuals on the blacklist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have helped, with 20 colleagues across the House, to secure today’s debate, and to have been involved with trade unions, including my own, Unite, with Tony Tinley helping out; the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, with Cheryl Pidgeon researching this debate; and the union that I used to work for before coming to this place, the GMB. If the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) is not yet in a trade union, I could put a number of offers to him to put that right. He should be careful; being anti-badger culling and pro-exposing blacklisting, he could be highly sought after, in these days of coalition, after the next general election.

It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson). I hope to be a supporting actor in what we have to do today. Blacklisting is, as my hon. Friend said, a disease. It is pernicious, and it spreads without people even knowing that it is there. It is vital, from the point of view of any civil or human rights stance that any party wishes to have, that we ensure that its days are definitely numbered.

What is blacklisting? It is the termination of workers’ employment for issues not related to performance. Such issues can, and have, included raising legitimate health and safety concerns; being a member of a trade union; and belonging to a political party whose ideals employers do not share. For those subject to the practice, as we have heard, the consequences can be incredibly devastating —discrimination, unemployment, poverty, family breakdown, mental breakdown and, in some extreme cases, even suicide.

The phenomenon is not new; it is not something of the past 20 or 30 years, or something, as my hon. Friend said, that concerns only the construction industry. It goes back a long way—way back to the beginning of the old Economic League in 1919. The league created a list of people whom it—not the courts of law or Parliament — regarded as subversive. Many individuals were listed and blighted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who has had to leave the Chamber, said in his speech to the House on 23 January 2013 that the Economic League’s blacklist was used to create difficulties—he gave his own example—in getting work once someone was on that list. Another colleague of ours in this House who has had first-hand experience of blacklisting is my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton). He has already gone on record about his experiences of being blacklisted. I am sure that he will not mind me saying that, in a conversation this morning, he told me that the only way his wife ever got a job—not him, but his wife—was to use her maiden name; the blacklisting spread past the individual to influence the family.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. The current blacklist from the 1990s is a slightly separate issue from blacklisting in general. Blacklisting has gone on for many decades, certainly in the construction industry. He will be aware of another person who was put on the blacklist—a member of the Shrewsbury 24—Ricky Tomlinson, who is now fighting a campaign to clear his name. He was denied the opportunity to make a livelihood for many years.

I do not think that many people fully understand the individual impact of being blacklisted. Those 3,200 people —not just the ones who know—have struggled for many years not only to clear their names but to earn a living. Does he agree that is the main reason why we are pushing the issue with the Government?

[Mr Allen]

I know that not everyone wants to make a speech: some colleagues may wish to make interventions instead. I will gladly take those interventions so that people can get their views on the record. My hon. Friend’s view is one that I strongly agree with.

Another colleague of ours, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern), mentioned the story of a disabled war veteran who had one leg and one eye. He 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.”—[Official Report, 23 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 337.]

The problem with this intelligence-based stuff is that it is not verifiable or in the public domain. Things can be said about someone, often trivially, that get them on the list, resulting in all sorts of consequences that they cannot challenge.

The Economic League gave way to the Consulting Association, which purchased the list from the league. It sounds a little bit like one of those building companies that go bust and then suddenly rise again the next day with a different name. That is the blacklist that we have mainly been talking about today—the 3,200 individuals—which has been used by 40 contractors. It is not the street-corner jobbing company that uses the list, but some of the biggest companies, whose names my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) put on the record, and many others too. Looking out of the window at the construction going on around us, we will see their names.

The revelations also highlighted the inadequacy of legal protections. Since 1999, legislation has given UK Governments the power to pass regulations against blacklisting, but all of us have singularly failed to push the Government to do what they should have. Only a year before the blacklisting was uncovered, UCATT, as we heard earlier, began lobbying the Government to pass acceptable regulations, only to be told, “There is no need for them. It is all under control. There isn’t really a serious problem.”

In 1992, the TUC complained to the United Nations International Labour Organisation. What a shaming thing that is for our country: that we were reported alongside sweatshops in the far east to the ILO for having no effective protection for workers in our country against being put on a blacklist, which blights the lives of workers and their families. The ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association upheld the complaint, saying that UK law fell short of article 98 of the ILO convention. Again, Governments failed to act.

To bring the issue right up to date, in March 2012, The Observer published an article claiming that the police and/or security services had supplied information to the blacklist to be used by the nation’s major construction firms, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton said. That was reinforced when the Information Commissioner’s Office revealed that the records could have come only from the police or MI5— not from a Member of the House or from someone making a political point. A vast database on more than 3,000 victims, whom somebody else deemed troublesome, was being fed by the security services. David Clancy, investigations officer at the Information Commissioner’s Office, stated in The Observer:

“the information was so specific and it contained in effect operational information that wouldn’t have formed anything other than a police record.”

We have to do something about this: the job is not done.

As hon. Friends have said, some protection against blacklisting was introduced in the Employment Relations Act 1999, although unions warned at the time that it was wholly inadequate. However, the raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office triggered a new regulation, which led to Ian Kerr, the chief executive of the Consulting Association, being fined £5,000—not exactly a king’s ransom—for breaking data protection laws. That is the price we put on the destruction of the lives of individuals and their families, for causes unknown to them, by this individual and his pals at the Consulting Association. However, Ian Kerr could not be punished for blacklisting employees, because it was not illegal to do so.

As many colleagues have made clear, there is still no positive right not to be blacklisted. Additionally, the burden of proof is placed on workers who suspect they have fallen foul of this odious practice. It is unreasonable to expect workers to prove in law what is, by its very nature, a covert practice. How on earth do they know it is going on? How, then, can they prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is happening? That is unreasonable.

The Scottish Affairs Committee’s inquiry into blacklisting pointed out that blacklisters do apologise and do seem to be sorry, but only when they are caught, and only when it is revealed, in the light of the public gaze, that they have transgressed. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) has pointed out that claims against blacklisting can be brought only through an employment tribunal or a county court, which can cause problems. For example, claims can be presented at a tribunal only within three months of the offence taking place, but it is often difficult, even years later, to find proof that an offence has taken place.

The professor of public law at King’s college, Keith Ewing, has been in touch with my office. He noted that there is still a tremendous gap in the new legislation that was put in place after the raid on the Consulting Association.