Labour leader Ed Miliband is pledging to hold a full inquiry into the secret blacklisting of thousands of workers if it wins power at the general election.
One of the unanswered questions surrounding the blacklisting centres on the role of covert police officers in helping the blacklisters.
The blacklist is one of many issues that has been largely overlooked in what has appeared to many to be a sterile general election campaign.
For years, major construction firms unlawfully compiled confidential files on thousands of workers who were denied employment for long periods. They included workers who raised health and safety concerns on building sites.
Miliband has called blacklisting “odious”, adding that a Labour government would launch a full inquiry into the practice.
“It will have one purpose and one purpose alone: to put an end to blacklisting right across the United Kingdom,” he has said.
Quite what form that inquiry would take is unclear. Labour is promising what it calls a “full inquiry that is transparent and public to examine the issue of blacklisting”.
Blacklisted workers want such an inquiry to examine allegations of how police covertly gathered information about the activities of workers that was shared with the blacklisters. (See here for evidence of this alleged collusion.)
For instance, Peter Francis, the former undercover officer turned whistleblower, has said he believes that he personally collected some of the intelligence that later appeared in the files of the blacklisting agency.
The apparent collusion between the police and the blacklisters may also come under scrutiny from other directions.
Home secretary Theresa May has ordered a public inquiry into the use of undercover police officers to infiltrate hundreds of political groups that will be led by a judge, Lord Justice Pitchford.
The remit of this inquiry is being drawn up at the moment and is expected to be announced by the end of July.
Blacklisted workers and trade unions are pressing for the issue to be included in the public inquiry headed by Pitchford. (See this for instance from the Blacklist Support Group).
Meanwhile the police’s involvement in blacklisting could be examined in the House of Commons.
For the last three years, the Scottish affairs select committee has been holding an inquiry into blacklisting, taking evidence from construction managers and those affected.
In their most recent report on the subject, MPs on the committee noted last month that “there have been regular allegations in the press in relation to police and security service involvement in blacklisting.”
The MPs said that they had not examined the claims as they detracted from their “main focus on the two main issues of seeking redress for blacklisted workers and recommending changes in term of procurement and best practice in employment in an attempt to eradicate the practice of blacklisting in the construction industry.”
However their stance appears to have changed that after it was revealed that Mark Jenner, one of the undercover officers deployed to infiltrate political campaigners, joined the construction union UCATT for three years during his covert mission.
The MPs said the allegations raised doubts about whether the full extent of blacklisting had been made public. They recommended that their successors on the Scottish affairs committee “should pursue this issue” when parliament resumes after the general election.
The MPs have the power to call police to give evidence.
