Blacklisting
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Chuka Umunna(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Umunna
I absolutely agree. This is particularly serious and shocking, and if the police are to command the confidence of people in this country, the questions that hang over them in respect of their involvement with blacklisting must be properly investigated.
What about legal protections for construction workers and the system of redress for victims? Although it was and remains the case that it is unlawful to refuse employment on the grounds of trade union membership alone, at the time of the Information Commissioner’s raid on the Consultancy Association in 2009, there was no specific general prohibition on blacklisting. It was therefore left to the commissioner to prosecute Mr Kerr for failing to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. As I said, he was fined just £5,000 as a result, which seems a shockingly small amount, given the devastation caused over the years. We have heard the evidence in the House this afternoon. Following the raid and the emergence of the blacklist, the Labour Government consulted on the issue of increasing the maximum monetary fine that could be imposed for serious breaches of data protection principles from £5,000 to £500,000. The increase came too late for the Kerr case.
Perhaps more shocking still is the fact that those firms that set up the association and became members—which supplied information to and accessed the blacklist—were neither charged with any offence like Mr Kerr nor ordered to pay compensation to the workers involved under that or any other law. To date, as I said, not one director of those companies has been brought to book for what happened. We also introduced the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 a few months after the raid. They provide for victims of blacklists to seek redress from employment tribunals and civil courts only. They do not contain criminal sanctions, but they make it unlawful to compile, supply, sell or use a “prohibited list”'. To be prohibited, the list must contain details of current or former trade union members, or details of people who are taking part, or who have in the past taken part, in trade union activities. Non-trade union members on a list that includes trade union members qualify for protection too. The list must be compiled with a view to its being used by employers or employment agencies for the purpose of discriminating when recruiting or during employment.
As cases have progressed through the courts it has become apparent that the regulations need to be strengthened. I am coming on to the point that the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) made. First, the regulations are not retrospective in effect. While they act as a strong deterrent to those considering using blacklists, many of the victims of the blacklisting in the past, whom I have described—and some hon. Members have been victims—are unable to make use of them to secure compensation. Given that this is the case, what more can be done to ensure that those who have been wronged have some form of redress or compensation?
Secondly, it is unclear to what extent those who are not employed, in the strict sense of that word, but are self-employed, may bring claims under these regulations where they have been refused work. We know that false self-employment in the construction sector is rampant, so this is an important point that needs to be cleared up.
Thirdly, claims can be brought in the employment tribunal or the county court. Though the cap on compensation in the tribunal is £72,300 and there is no cap in the county court, people often prefer—I know this from my previous practice as an employment lawyer—to claim in the employment tribunal because it can be less laborious for claimants and the cost consequences of losing a case are less severe. However, claims brought in the tribunal must be brought within three months of the alleged unlawful act. Claims brought after that time can be allowed only at the discretion of the tribunal. Again, that needs to be looked at, because so many of the people affected are not even aware that these unlawful acts took place.
The upshot of all this is that often the only legal remedy for a significant number of victims of blacklisting is through a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of a breach of their convention rights—article 8 on privacy and article 11 on freedom of information. That, of course, can take a long time and a great deal of resource. There are a number of cases going through the courts at present, which I will not refer to now as I do not wish to prejudice those trials, but we must be realistic about asking individual workers, many of whom have lost their livelihoods and so do not have huge resources, to enforce their rights against those very well resourced companies.
For these reasons I ask the Secretary of State, who I am pleased is here today, to carry out a review of the law in this area to see how it might be tightened up and protections and sanctions strengthened, and for him to report back to the House on his findings. I have deliberately not set out detail in respect of legal changes that may be needed to address these technical issues. That is something on which we can work together to achieve consensus. However, just as we correctly argue for robust legislation to protect whistleblowers, we must ensure that a climate of fear is not allowed to continue around the issue of blacklisting.
No worker on any building site or at other workplaces throughout the land should hesitate before reporting an unsafe site or a dangerous working practice. That means that they must have confidence that the law is with them—is firmly on their side—and that there will be no question of that report being noted down somewhere in a file for troublemakers, allowing firms such as the construction companies to get away with what they have been doing.
Finally, I turn to the work of the Information Commissioner.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I congratulate the Opposition on bringing this motion before the House. I tried to intervene on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), when he was about to deal with a part of the motion that needs a tiny bit of clarity—where it states that blacklisting “may be taking place” still.
Mr Umunna
I am happy to explain that. It goes back to a point made by the Secretary of State. I used the word “may” because there have been a lot of allegations about what may be happening right now, but we need people to come forward with the evidence. I believe that that evidence will be forthcoming to the Secretary of State fairly quickly after this debate.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that.
I have no great knowledge of blacklisting, so when I decided to look into it for the purposes of this debate I read through the papers from the Scottish Affairs Committee, and it became fairly obvious that something pretty horrible had been happening over a long period. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) detailed her achievements in the delivery of the Olympic park. It is fascinating that even with such detailed negotiations involving the Olympic Delivery Authority, Government and trade unions, this practice could still take place. I would therefore ask her how, even with such detailed negotiations beforehand and probably a very beady eye being cast over all the proceedings, we can stop this practice happening. There is a lesson to be learned in relation to contracts and how we procure in future.