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Blacklisting (Construction Industry)

I am pleased to have secured this Adjournment debate on blacklisting, because the practice impacts on the health of the construction industry and is accordingly a matter of public concern. The Government are the sector's largest client, so they have some responsibility to ensure that the working practices of the 1930s have no place in our modern construction industry. I hope that the Minister will take action to encourage the industry to change. I want to make four brief points. The first is about the impact on the health and safety culture of the industry, and the second is about the climate of fear that discrimination creates. My third point is about the fact that many of the companies using the list kept by the Consulting Association were major companies working on publicly procured projects. Finally, I want to suggest to the Minister that, along with other measures, section 3 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 should now be implemented. The construction industry is important. Before the recession, it provided employment for more than 2.8 million people. It contributed 8.7 per cent. of the UK economy's gross value added in 2006; to put that into perspective, I should say that that is twice that produced by the energy, automotive and aerospace industries combined. Construction has a huge impact on the UK economy. It is vital, and that is why we need a world-class construction sector that uses the best employment practices. The health and safety record of the industry is worrying. Construction, for example, accounts for almost one third of workplace fatalities in the UK. The year 2006-07 saw an increase in the number of fatalities from 60 to 77, and in 2007-08 there were 72 fatal injuries. More than half those deaths resulted from a fall or from a worker's being struck by a falling object. Workplace safety representatives are an essential tool in helping to improve the health and safety culture on site, but the blacklisting of people who take on the job militates against that. The Government have an important role to play in the issue, and workplace safety representatives will need to be reassured that they will not be blacklisted if they do their job properly. I shall return to that issue later.