Peter Maundelson confirmed today that the government is to launch a short consultation in the summer on making blacklisting illegal with the aim of bringing in any legislation by the autumn.
Rob Evans over at the Guardian had news on this yesterday although I predicted this would happen in a piece for Tribune nearly two weeks ago which I originally posted a week before that.
The statement from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform says:
The government will launch a consultation in the early summer on revised regulations. As there has already been a full consultation in 2003, this second consultation will be shorter than the usual twelve week period. The short consultation is necessary to ensure that the regulations take full account of developments since 2003 and are up to date and fit for purpose. It will enable interested parties to give feedback on how the regulations can be refined and improved.
Ministers plan to seek Parliamentary approval for the regulations in the autumn and implement them urgently as soon as it can thereafter.
It has been welcomed by the TUC but construction union is disappointed that any action will be delayed.
Update May 12 12.39pm:
Some of the stories which have followed up on this
Firms may yet face legal action, according to Building magazine.
Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors
and some more:
Bradford Telegraph & ArgusXpert HR
The Ucatt statement also raises the interesting point that the Information Commissioner wants to destroy the blacklisting files it has recovered once everybody has had a chance to get hold of their file.
Mr Ritchie (Alan Ritchie, general secretary), said: “UCATT has written to all members telling them how they can discover whether they were blacklisted but not every construction worker is a UCATT member. There is an urgent need for all construction workers and former construction workers to be able to find out if they were blacklisted. Until that process is exhausted then it is wrong for the records to be destroyed.”
I actually think it might be nice to keep them (suitably redacted) as some kind of historical resource for future researchers.
Update 16.20pm: ICO has just issued this statement:
“The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will only keep the personal details seized from The Consulting Association for as long as necessary. However, we are naturally keen for those people on Ian Kerr’s system to have the opportunity to come forward and find out what information was held about them. We are keeping the timescales involved in this matter under review and no firm date to destroy the information has been set.”
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