Vince Cable
Main Page: Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)
In trying to reflect the spirit in which the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) introduced the debate, let me begin by saying that we would all agree that blacklisting is a thoroughly objectionable and indefensible practice. He is right to focus attention in particular on the construction industry. We all know that that industry is not only important but dangerous, and the health and safety issues in that sector are extremely important.
The reason that the hon. Gentleman has brought the debate is to seek an investigation—an inquiry. I have been listening very carefully and I shall try to be constructive. What I am not clear about, even after listening to him for half an hour, is whether we are talking about the word “was” or the word “is”. He spoke about “may be”. That is rather an important distinction.
Are we being asked to reopen an investigation that has already been held and legislation that has already been passed under the previous Government? I am not trying to be partisan; it happened. Are we being asked to revisit history—frankly, I am sceptical about the value of that—or are we talking about something that is actually going on? If it is actually going on, it is a serious matter and it needs investigation. I, of course, will want to see it properly investigated, but we want some evidence.
The hon. Gentleman made a speech today and there has been a battery of articles in the newspapers—a big page in The Times this morning—alleging that these things are happening. Well, bring it here. I will investigate it if there is any evidence that we can investigate. Let us be clear. Are we talking about now, or are we talking about an investigation into history?
Mr Umunna
I believe that what happened in the past needs to be investigated because we know and we have the evidence only now that it happened in the past. I have just explained and taken the Secretary of State in detail through the latest evidence, in particular that given to the Scottish Affairs Committee. Given that this practice happened in the past, it is right that we investigate how it came to happen. Why did Government Departments not know that it was going on? What questions were being asked? What do we need to learn from that?
In respect of the here and now, allegations have been made—I was very careful about the language that I used—to suggest that that is still ongoing. That also needs to be investigated.
Vince Cable
I hope the hon. Gentleman will agree that those are quite different things. If we are reopening the past, that is a different kind of inquiry conducted by different people in a different time frame. I need to be clear about what we are being asked to do.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
On the point that the Secretary of State just made, would it not be fantastic if everybody accused of wrongdoing did the police’s job and brought the evidence to the likes of the Secretary of State? The right hon. Gentleman is the Secretary of State. He can order the inquiry and he should do so.
Vince Cable
As I just said, if I can see any evidence that, under our Government—I have responsibility in this area—wrongdoing is taking place, or even evidence that suggests that it is taking place, I am very happy to investigate it. Nobody has yet come forward. As regards the past, one of the features that was not referred to earlier is the fact that the previous Government made it absolutely clear that the penalties and redress were not retrospective. That is what the previous Government determined. They could have applied fines retrospectively; they did not. They drew a line under history in 2010. That was their decision and that is what I inherited.
Mr Umunna
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way again. In relation to what has happened and whether he should investigate matters that occurred in the past under previous Governments, his Government have announced the results of inquiries and set up inquiries across a range of Departments into what happened under previous Governments. That should not preclude an investigation now in respect of things that happened in the past.
On what is happening now, oral evidence has been given to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee outlining things that have happened. I am not talking about scurrilous press reports; I am talking about hard evidence—witness evidence—that has been given to the Select Committee.
Vince Cable
Let me just try to draw a line under this part of the argument. I am trying to be helpful; I do not see any particular value in having a party political barney over this. If there is evidence forthcoming about current practice, of course we want to have it investigated, and I will investigate it. For that reason, I am not going to recommend to my colleagues that they vote against the motion. It might well be true that there are issues here, and I do not want to close the door on the matter if there is evidence out there that needs investigating.
That is one set of issues, but there is a completely different perspective as far as the past is concerned. I will go over what happened in the past in a moment, but that is a different question. My responsibilities lie, as part of this Government, in dealing with things that might have happened over the past two and a half years. If things are happening, of course we must get to the bottom of it.
Charlie Elphicke
The question that forms in my mind is: have there been further cases of blacklisting since the regulations came into force? We have parliamentary privilege that we can use in the Chamber, and it is important that we should hear examples of blacklisting that have occurred since the regulations came into force, rather than simply holding an inquiry for the sake of holding an inquiry.
Vince Cable
Let me just answer this point.
I do not see the value of a fishing expedition. We need evidence that something is happening in order to investigate it.
Vince Cable
Let me just proceed a little more.
I should like to move on from that point and to ask, out of genuine curiosity, about the way in which this issue has surfaced in the form of an Opposition day debate. The Prime Minister was totally right to point out as a matter of fact that these things had happened before 2010, and I do not quite understand why that has caused such offence. Many of the issues that have been raised here relate to the conduct and behaviour of the Information Commissioner. As the hon. Member for Streatham and his colleagues know, those in the Information Commissioner’s Office are not Government officials responsible to Ministers; they are responsible to the House. The Information Commissioner is a different kind of animal from a Government Department. Many of the allegations relate to the courts, and to civil and criminal practice, for which we cannot take responsibility.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Vince Cable
May I just finish this argument?
I am genuinely baffled by the way in which the hon. Member for Streatham and his colleagues have approached this matter. He could have come and talked to me about this subject at any time. He knows perfectly well that I hold regular meetings in my office with his own colleagues on a Monday evening, and if they have individual cases that they are worried about, particularly confidential cases that they do not want to discuss elsewhere, we can discuss them. I am very happy to discuss them. Nobody has come to me on this issue in the past two and a half years, however.
I regularly meet the general secretary of the TUC. He—now she—is a valued stakeholder, and I talk to her on the same basis that I talk to the CBI. We have regular meetings, and at no stage in those meetings has anybody ever asked to discuss the issue of blacklisting. I meet national officers of the GMB, of Unite and of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, and occasionally their general secretaries, and none of them has ever raised the issue of blacklisting. So why has the subject suddenly surfaced in an Opposition day debate? It is difficult to get my head round what is going on here.
John McDonnell
I want justice to come out of this debate. The right hon. Gentleman will know—he can look at the Hansard record—that I have been raising this issue for more than a decade. On the point about past issues, things changed when the evidence exposed the potential of police or security services involvement. I raised that with the Prime Minister on 21 March 2012, and asked for an investigation. That was at the time when he was setting up the Leveson inquiry, and I felt that this matter was on a par with that. The response that I got from him was, to be frank, truculent. He suggested that the police should investigate police involvement in blacklisting. There is a qualitative difference now that we have the information from the Select Committee, particularly about the past involvement of the police and the security services.
Vince Cable
I have read in the paper—and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has now said—that there is an issue affecting the police force and the security services, but has he, or the Opposition spokesman or anyone else, referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission? Has it been referred to the security services Investigatory Powers Tribunal? It might be that such referrals did not lead anywhere and that we need to look at doing something else, but were they made in the first place?
Mr Umunna
I am genuinely flabbergasted by the Secretary of State’s response. He asks why we have raised these issues now, in an Opposition day debate. It is because of all the evidence that has come out of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. I can tell him that we have seen other evidence as well, from outside the Select Committee, including the exchange of letters between the Olympic Delivery Authority and Balfour Beatty, not to mention some of the stuff relating to Crossrail. That is why we are having the debate now.
In respect of the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the courts and the tribunals, I am not asking him to impose his view of what the judgment should be in a particular case. We know, however, that one problem with the regulations is that employment tribunals have failed because, if someone was employed as a contractor on a project, without a direct employee-employer relationship, and they have been blacklisted, the regulations are no use to them. That is why I am saying that we need to review the law and to strengthen it.
Vince Cable
I should like to move on, but I shall just make the point that if those practices are continuing, it would be an extremely serious matter. It would need investigating and we might well need legislative change because the previous regulations were not strong enough. That might well be the case. I am just asking Opposition Members, particularly those on the Front Bench, to co-operate with me, because I am very happy to take this matter forward if there is an issue to investigate.
As far as the past is concerned, I will certainly look at all the evidence that has come out of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, and we will see whether it needs to be dealt with in a different way, because it is a matter of history. I am primarily concerned, however, with the implication that this is still going on. Of course, if it is still going on, it needs to be investigated and stopped. That is the essence of the problem.
Vince Cable
I have taken a lot of interventions. I want to make a little progress, then perhaps I will take some more.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. A lot of Members want to speak, and the more time that is taken up with interventions, the less time will be available for their speeches. I do not mind which happens, but Members must choose. The Secretary of State has said that he will not give way for a while, and I know that some Members who want to catch my eye are getting frustrated.
Vince Cable
I should like to go through the issues that have been raised step by step. Most of them relate to the past. I want to start by describing factually the matters covered by the 2008-09 Information Commissioner’s investigation. He used his powers under the Data Protection Act 1998 to launch an investigation, based on a story in The Guardian newspaper that an intelligence system had been used to vet workers for employment in the UK construction industry. As a result of that, a search warrant was issued in 2008, leading to a search of the premises of the Consulting Association in February 2009. The investigation resulted in the successful prosecution of the Consulting Association for breaching data protection law and it was closed down. The owner, Mr Kerr—now, I think, deceased—was fined £5,000, which was the maximum fine at the time. The levels of fines have now been radically changed. Fifteen enforcement notices were issued against the Consulting Association and some of its user construction companies to stop them collecting and using personal data for vetting purposes.
The investigation looked further, but came to the conclusion that there was no evidence that blacklisting existed in other industries, or that the number of construction workers blacklisted went beyond those in the files secured by the Information Commissioner. In other words, it addressed the question that Members are now trying to raise in their interventions. It is important to reflect that that wholly independent body asked the questions that are now being asked, and that it came to that very clear conclusion.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I realise that the Secretary of State is attempting to be fair—[Interruption.] I will not divide the House on that, but it seems that way to me—I treat former Labour councillors from Glasgow with the utmost respect. My point is that evidence of blacklisting from that time has only recently come out. People did not know about it or hear about it, so what reaction can they give? I understand that during one of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s hearings a witness revealed that my name was on the list and that I had been described as a communist—me, a former altar boy! How will the Secretary of State deal with information that only emerges today but relates to the past?
Vince Cable
I, too, have been called a communist, including since this Government came into office, but I am not demanding an official investigation.
Then there is the question of the ICO’s handling of blacklisted individuals. As I understand it, the ICO—it is a fully independent body, not a Government agency—is trying to contact the individuals on the Consulting Association’s blacklist and help them with the long-term consequences. I repeat—this point seemed to get a little lost earlier—the ICO is a fully independent regulatory body, so we cannot pursue individual cases. I understand that there are some genuine practical problems. For example, some of the names cannot be deciphered and addresses are not available in some cases. However, my understanding is that the ICO is doing its best to trace every individual concerned and to assist them.
Mr David Hamilton
No doubt I was on the list because I was a communist at the time—[Interruption.] Those were the good old days. The Secretary of State indicated that he will not push this motion to a vote and that he was not for an inquiry. May I make the observation? All of us in the Chamber realised that phone hacking was taking place, but none of us could prove it, and we could not prove it until an investigation was initiated. That is the heart of the problem. Will he give an assurance that he will investigate and follow the investigation, even if it does go back a way, because I am sure that when he starts investigating what happens, there will be a history that goes right back? Will he take that investigation all the way back?
Vince Cable
The difference with the phone hacking scandal, of course, is that it has only just come to attention and been demonstrated, and there has now been an investigation into it. The ICO inquiry was an investigation into the things about which we are now complaining, and as far as I can establish it was a thorough and comprehensive inquiry.
Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way on that specific point. It is important that the debate in this House sends the clearest possible message of support to the Information Commissioner in the further enquiries he intends to make on this. The analogy my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) makes with phone hacking is absolutely right. For months—years, in fact—the defence that phone hacking was the action of one rogue reporter kept proper investigation at bay. I hope that the Secretary of State recognises that the evidence that has been provided, even in the short time so far, is sufficient to justify further investigation, even if only to send the clearest possible signal to the construction industry that blacklisting was, is and will be wholly and utterly unacceptable.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We will have to have very short interventions if Members also wish to catch my eye.
Vince Cable
Of course blacklisting is wholly and utterly unacceptable, and of course the industry needs to understand that—I think that was the first remark I made. If it is about sending signals, we have already done so, and of course we will have a close look at what the Scottish Affairs Committee has said and whether it has found any new evidence. I do not think that this debate has brought forward anything new, but perhaps the Select Committee has. Obviously, if there is fundamental new information, logically we will look at that, but we have not yet seen it.
Then there is the question of the existing legislative framework, to which the hon. Member for Streatham drew attention. Let me just go over the legislative framework. The Data Protection Act 1998 was the basis on which the investigation took place, and the Information Commissioner used the maximum legal powers available at the time, which have since been increased, hence the ability to use civil penalties of £500,000. There is also the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which makes it unlawful to employ a person because they are a member—or, indeed, not a member—of a trade union or because they refuse to join or leave a trade union. It is equally unlawful for an agency to refuse employment services on those grounds. As we have heard, an individual can bring an employment tribunal complaint within three months of an offence taking place, or longer if it was not reasonably practical to bring the claim in time. That is what many workers have done in this case. Finally, there is the legislation that the previous Government introduced, the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010, under which it became unlawful to use, compile, sell or supply blacklists of trade union members or activities for discriminatory purposes such as employment vetting.
There was a decade of review of the 1999 Act and its implications. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), have asked why action was not taken more quickly. Let me go through the history of that decade. The Employment Relations Act 1999 introduced the power for the Secretary of State to make regulations to outlaw the creation, use, sale or supply of blacklists, but no regulations were introduced in 1999. Four years later, in 2003, the Government carried out a public review of the effect of the Act and concluded that there was no evidence of blacklisting, but they did publish draft blacklisting regulations and said that they would introduce them swiftly if the need arose. The ICO then investigated the Consulting Association, after which the Government introduced the regulations that had been published in draft.
Therefore, there was a very long process of consultation. Preparatory legislation was produced in case there was evidence that something had taken place, and indeed there was and the Government acted. My approach is exactly the same. If companies have found a way around the regulations and abuses are still taking place, we of course need to look at taking fresh steps, but I am waiting to hear that evidence.
Mr David Anderson
Will the Secretary of State address the point I raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) about the involvement of the police and security services? The ICO’s investigations manager has stated in evidence:
“I believe some of the information would have come from those types of sources.”
Surely there is a public interest, and an interest in this House, in what public servants of the Crown were doing in feeding information to private companies.
Vince Cable
That is an allegation and, as I said a few moments ago, if there is serious substance to it and a good basis for investigation, it should first have gone to the Police Complaints Authority and to the body that looks at the security services. There is a process. It might be tedious to go through it, but that is what we have to do. If those avenues have been exhausted, perhaps we can take it to the next stage, but I have no evidence that they have even been tried.
The next question was whether we should now be investigating construction companies working on public contracts. That is the issue for today. As I have said many times, I am open to new evidence if it is available, because it is very clear that any company working on a public contract must comply with the law. Of course companies should not break data protection law, trade union law or the blacklist regulations.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State keeps returning to the point that there needs to be evidence of blacklisting after 2010. How does he respond to the statement made only last week by Balfour Beatty that it used blacklisting when taking on workers for the construction of the Olympic venues?
Vince Cable
I am coming to the Balfour Beatty point, which I think related to events four or five years ago; I am happy to be corrected, but that is my understanding. Let me say what I think happened in that case. We knew that Balfour Beatty wrote to the Olympic Delivery Authority admitting that one company in its group made checks on 12 potential employees prior to February 2009. That was in response to a letter from the ODA, one of a number sent to high-profile contractors. The firm insists that all 12 people were given jobs and that there was no wider or further use of pre-employment checks. The ODA has taken a very clear and unambiguous stand condemning blacklisting in the operation of the Olympics. There is no question but that the practice was taking place well back during the last Government.
I have already responded to allegations of collusion by the police and security services. There is then the question of remedies; people have clearly been damaged, and evidence has been advanced. Let us review the redress. Those excluded from employment can seek redress in the county courts or the Court of Session in Scotland and other rights under the regulations can be enforced in employment tribunals.
I repeat the point I made in response to an intervention: the last Government took the view that legislation should not apply retrospectively and prior to 2010. I suspect that a lot of the frustration and anger of people who have been hurt by what happened relates to the decision not to apply the measures retrospectively.
Caroline Dinenage
The Secretary of State is being generous in taking interventions. Does he think in retrospect that it was a mistake not to make the legislation retrospective, given the evidence that we have heard, particularly from the Opposition, about the real human impact? Thousands of families have potentially been impacted and prevented from claiming compensation retrospectively.
Vince Cable
From a human point of view, drawing a line at that point clearly caused damage. However, on a wide variety of measures the House has always taken the view that retrospective legislation is dangerous and creates all kinds of problems.
A number of individuals believe that they have been affected by the blacklisting and they have taken action through the courts. As I understand it at the moment, last year 86 workers who believed that they were blacklisted launched a High Court claim against Sir Robert McAlpine for conspiring with other firms to keep them out of work. Legal proceedings on that action are still under way, so I cannot usefully discuss the matter. However, a major legal action is taking place and it will, of course, affect the issue of redress.
In conclusion, I repeat the points I made a moment ago. My primary concern, in the job that I now have, is what is happening under the Government in respect of my responsibilities in this field. I am concerned to read that abuse is, or even may be, taking place. My door is open at any time to any Opposition or Government Member who has evidence of abuse, because we want to stop it and we will certainly investigate it if it is happening. I will look carefully at the report of the Scottish Affairs Committee to see whether fundamentally new questions have emerged from its inquiry.
We will deal with the other issues in the summary session. If Opposition Members or trade unions have evidence, I really want them to bring it forward. Innuendo is not helpful; we need evidence.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am going to introduce an eight-minute limit; hopefully, we will try to shave a little off the speeches here and there. We will see what we can do.