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The GMB union has threatened legal action against the Information Commissioner unless his office actively contacts all those construction workers whose details were held on a covert database seized by the watchdog in a raid three years ago.

Lawyers acting for the GMB have written to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) asking it to take action to inform around 3000 builders that they are on a ‘blacklist’, which the data-protection regulator has been in possession of since 2009. More than 40 construction companies subscribed to the database, which was run by the Consulting Association, in order to vet new recruits and monitor employment trade union and health and safety activists.

The ICO position is that builders who think they are on this blacklist should contact its offices. However, the GMB insists that the watchdog should be actively informing all the individuals who are on the database, so that the latter can seek justice.

In a letter to the ICO earlier this month, Leigh Day & Co Solicitors wrote: “The remedy sought is for disclosure of, or access to, the database. . . The ICO’s current refusal to contact individuals on the database, whose details are with the information you hold, means many thousands of individuals are unaware that their personal data has been unlawfully held and used against them.”

The ICO confirmed to SHP that it had received the letter and is considering its response.

At the end of July, human rights and civil-liberties pressure group Liberty also wrote to the ICO requesting that it reopen an investigation into the 44 companies that subscribed to the database and, where serious breaches of the Data Protection Act are found, issue enforcement notices and fines, as appropriate.

During an employment tribunal earlier this year, Carillion admitted that two of its subsidiaries – Carillion (JM) Limited and Schal International Management Limited – had used the services of the Consulting Association and that managers had supplied information to the blacklist about Dave Smith, of the Blacklisting Support Group, when he was a UCATT safety rep.



A GMB report published in June estimated that from October 1999 to April 2004 Carillion checked at least 14,724 names with the Consulting Association. In response to the publication, Carillion distanced itself from these allegations, stating: “These allegations of blacklisting are believed to concern matters that took place many years ago and relate to businesses acquired by Carillion. The law has changed significantly in the intervening period.”

The Scottish Affairs Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into blacklisting in employment practices.