Scottish Affairs Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 156

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Scottish Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 6 November 2012

Members present:

Mr Ian Davidson (Chair)

Mike Crockart

Jim McGovern

Mr Alan Reid

Lindsay Roy

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Alan Wainwright gave evidence.

Q916 Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. As you are aware, we are looking at the question of blacklisting in general. At the beginning of the meeting I want the Clerk to put on the record the issues relating to parliamentary privilege just so that you, we and anybody else observing this are clear about your position and our position.

The Clerk (Eliot Wilson): Just to be clear, the evidence that you give today is protected by parliamentary privilege.

Alan Wainwright: Okay; thank you.

Q917 Chair: Would you like to start by telling us who you are? As we discussed before you came in, you can possibly make a little opening statement, and then we will go through a raft of questions.

Alan Wainwright: I am somebody who has worked in the industry in senior positions and has made an attempt over the past few years to try to expose blacklisting in the construction industry. It is important to say that somebody has made a few comments to the Committee that this has been like a one-man crusade for me. That is certainly not the case. I don’t think I have had too much to do with this. I have obviously made a contribution but there are so many other people who have made a significant contribution.

Another thing is that in the last 10 years I have only worked for one year in this industry. All of this evidence I have given you happened so far back. That is just giving you an idea. I have only worked one year in the last 10 years in the construction industry. I have also made you aware that I have this website blog. I have tried to put a lot of evidence on there. That has partly been for me. This really doesn’t form part of my life; it’s in my past. I am not somebody who lives with this every day. I put everything on the website so that it enables me to move on and deal with this.

I am obviously going to try and help you as best I can, but this isn’t something that I live and breathe every day. Some of the people who are involved with this do, because they are involved in it on a daily basis. I have put all of this in a little box, which is my website, the blog, and that then enables me to get on with my life. I will try and be as helpful as I can.

The final thing is that I submitted some evidence to you yesterday. Has everybody had that?

Chair: Yesterday, yes.

Alan Wainwright: I sent a statement through and I have evidenced it up. I have backed it all up with evidence, but that evidence only came into my possession last Friday. So there were two late nights on the weekend matching all that evidence up to the statement that I presented to you.

Chair: Yes; that is helpful.

Alan Wainwright: I will do my best, but, as I say, I don’t live and breathe this.

Q918 Chair: We understand that, but you are probably one of the best sources in terms of helping us clarify what did happen and who was involved. We will obviously be approaching some of those named by you and others to obtain further clarification.

I will start by asking you what firms you have worked for in the construction industry where you have either been involved in or aware of blacklisting operating.

Alan Wainwright: I have worked at Carillion plc, but they were formerly Tarmac when I joined them. The perception has been given to the Committee that I actually worked for Crown House. I worked for Tarmac. My payslips are Tarmac; my terms and conditions were with Tarmac and then Carillion, obviously. Along with lots of other Crown House people, we were just Carillion employees.

I then worked very briefly for Emcor Drake & Scull. Then, in 2005, I again worked very briefly for Haden Young Ltd, who were a subsidiary of Balfour Beatty. They have since rebranded to become Balfour Beatty Engineering along with another Balfour Beatty subsidiary, Balfour Kilpatrick Ltd. About three months after this came out in March 2009 both of these companies rebranded, in July 2009, to Balfour Beatty Engineering.

Q919 Chair: Those are the three firms that you were personally involved with.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q920 Chair: What was your job role with each of these?

Alan Wainwright: At Carillion I was brought in to set up their in-house agency for mechanical and electrical trades. Prior to that I had my own business and I had supplied labour to Crown House Engineering. They already had their own internal agency called NCS, which was supplying about 1,000 construction workers to all the Tarmac-shall I call them Tarmac or Carillion?

Q921 Chair: Call them Tarmac if that is what they were at the time.

Alan Wainwright: I am conscious, Chair, that Tarmac still exists in a different entity, in building aggregates, and I don’t want their name and their brand to be tainted in the press by that.

Q922 Chair: I am sorry, I had not appreciated that.

Alan Wainwright: Shall we go with Carillion?

Q923 Chair: Yes. The Tarmac for whom you worked is now part of Carillion, but there is another Tarmac that still exists.

Alan Wainwright: It was all Tarmac, and then they sold off the aggregates business to somebody and retained that Tarmac brand. Then they rebranded the existing business to Carillion with a new image and everything else. The business just carried on but they sold off the aggregates. I am conscious that, if we mention the word "Tarmac", the existing business could potentially be aligned with this and I don’t think they are. I will use the word "Carillion". Sorry, what was your question again, Chair?

Q924 Chair: What was your job role with each of the firms that you mentioned?

Alan Wainwright: I was brought in to set up an internal recruitment agency. They had their own agency called NCS and it supplied all these construction trades. I originally worked in that business because it was just me, a desk and a computer that didn’t work. I started off and built that business up to have, I would say, somewhere round about 300 mechanical and electrical operatives.

I was working and reported directly to the managing director of the business at the time-a chap called Roger Robinson. We became aware that there were lots of losses. They had about a £30 million or £40 million labour bill and there were lots of inefficiencies in it. I had lots of ideas about how I could improve that. He promoted me to national labour manager of the M&E business, which was Crown House. I centralised all the recruitment of agency labour because it was being recruited all over the country. I brought in things like electronic time and attendance systems. Computerised systems were quite a big thing back in 1997. I set up a central labour department.

I left them in approximately 2000 to join Emcor Drake & Scull. They basically wanted me to do the same for them. People from NG Bailey and Drake & Scull came to look at it. Even the manager I eventually went to work for at Haden Young five years later came and had a look at what I had set up through contacts in the business. We had it running pretty much efficiently. I joined Emcor Drake & Scull, but I was only with them for about three or four months. I basically needed six members of staff to do what I needed to do. I was going to get 1.8 or 1.5, so we couldn’t agree on that.

I then left the industry. I went on to develop some software. I was approached by a recruitment consultant in 2004 who had seen my CV.

Q925 Chair: That was the end of your involvement with the construction industry and anything relating to the blacklist.

Alan Wainwright: No. A recruitment consultant then contacted me and said that somebody at Haden Young wanted to speak to me and would I be interested in joining them. The manager at the time, who became my manager, had been in and visited my offices and looked at what we were doing with time and attendance, productivity and recruitment. I had a good reputation, even though I had been out of the industry. I joined them in a reasonably senior role. I was there for about six months. We hadn’t done any recruitment; that is why I never came across the blacklisting.

Then in January 2005 a site started to need labour. They work in cycles. It is called ramping-up and ramping-down, because they have large work forces. There is another point here that I should mention with Tarmac and Carillion. They have now rebranded to become Balfour Beatty Engineering. Again, it all depends what you want me to call them, because Haden Young is no longer out there trading, but they are still trading as Balfour Beatty Engineering.

Q926 Chair: It is probably best to say Haden Young because that is who you were working for at the time. The only reason to avoid the confusion with Tarmac is because of them being another company.

I want to clarify where and when you were first aware of the blacklist operating in construction.

Alan Wainwright: When I met Ian Kerr in 1997. As I have mentioned in my written evidence to you, he came to see me. Do you want me to go into the whole story of what I have put in my evidence, or just the fact that we met?

Q927 Chair: Clarify for us when you met, where you met and why you met, together with the nature of the discussion.

Alan Wainwright: I met him in Carillion’s Manchester office, which is where I was based, in 1997. The reason I met him was because I was instructed to. Crown House had an HR manager called Kevin Gorman. He told me that an instruction had come from the group personnel director in Carillion, Frank Duggan, that I was to meet this guy and that we were to introduce his system of checking procedure into the business. That was in 1997.

Q928 Jim McGovern: I am intrigued by the different names of the companies. My father has been a trade union member all his working life. He worked for Briggs, which eventually was taken over by Tarmac. My wife has been a trade union member all her life as well. She was secretary to the managing director of Tarmac. I am unaware of any anti-trade union issues with the company at that time. When did you first find out that there seemed to be an anti-trade union issue either at Tarmac or whatever it is called now?

Alan Wainwright: Carillion. As I have just mentioned, the first time I came across anything like this was in 1997. Hold on; let me just think back. You are asking me a question that I have already answered so I am wondering if I have. I don’t think there was anything before that, no. It just came out of the blue.

Q929 Jim McGovern: So it has not been a 30, 40 or 50 years’ campaign against the trade unions. It is just something that happened in the 1990s.

Alan Wainwright: It was nothing that I was aware of, but I joined them in 1993. As I said, it was one man and a desk, starting off this internal recruitment business. I was promoted, given more responsibilities and I set up a central labour department. I centralised the recruitment of agency labour. It was being recruited on all the sites by every manager and everybody else, and they had no control of this massive cost. I centralised it so that every order for agency labour came in, and it went out to preferred suppliers. That is how we got control of the flow of who we were recruiting into the business on a temporary basis. There was nothing that I can recall before then.

Q930 Chair: You met Ian Kerr at the instigation of Frank Duggan, who was higher up in Carillion.

Alan Wainwright: Yes; he was the group personnel director.

Q931 Chair: What was the conversation that you had with Ian Kerr? What did he explain to you?

Alan Wainwright: He turned up, and obviously I had been told that this person was coming to see me. The instruction was that I was to introduce this checking procedure. He already had computerised records then because I am pretty sure he showed me a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with names, national insurance numbers and descriptions. It is very hard, Chair, because it was 1997, but my best recollection would be something along the lines of, "I’ve got this all functioning in the construction industry. It is fully functioning already in Carillion. There is a group of people out there who are hellbent on causing disruption to the projects and we are starting to introduce this service on behalf of the current members into their mechanical and electrical subsidiaries." A lot of the construction companies had bought their own M&E-mechanical and electrical-subsidiary, or some of them.

Q932 Chair: He was explaining to you that there was already a system there that companies were using, which was now being extended into M&E, and that you should therefore be availing yourselves of it.

Alan Wainwright: It was a bit more than that. I had already had the instruction that I was to introduce it. That had come through right down from Frank Duggan. It was just a matter of me understanding how he wanted it to work. He had explained that it was very covert and very secret and all that, and I was not to tell anybody about it. All of the agency labour recruitment was coming through my department. It is very hard because it was 1997, Chair, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t a lengthy meeting.

Q933 Chair: Business is business.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q934 Mr Reid: You have referred to a computerised database. My recollection of the evidence we had from the Information Commissioner when they did the raid was that they found only a paper and card index database. Do you have any idea as to why the Information Commissioner didn’t find the computerised database?

Alan Wainwright: He probably didn’t look hard enough. I watched his evidence to you. This guy was computerised back then in 1997. What has happened from about 2006 is that the construction industry or the member companies of this Consulting Association had a whiff that I was trying to expose them. Do you want my views on why you only found a card index system?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Alan Wainwright: I am pretty sure that that was quite possibly planned, so that if somebody did turn up they could say, "Here it is", possibly to protect how far it had developed. That is just my personal view; that is how I would see it.

Q935 Mr Reid: As far as you are aware then, presumably the computerised database is still in existence.

Alan Wainwright: I know nothing about it. He showed me print-offs from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Q936 Chair: So there was a computerised database at that time.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q937 Chair: What was your reaction on finding this or being introduced to this?

Alan Wainwright: In 1997?

Chair: Yes.

Alan Wainwright: It is hard to say because I had a million things on. I met this guy and I added a line or two of code into one of our databases in Carillion to allow the names to come in, be entered, printed off and faxed to him, so that we had some sort of database control within Carillion. At this point I had a thousand different tasks all running live. I allocated this task to somebody in the department. It was a lady called Laurie Gill. That just became part of her job. In the early stages they were faxed off.

Q938 Chair: You did not query it at all at that stage.

Alan Wainwright: I would almost certainly have discussed it with my boss, who was the managing director, because at the time I reported directly to the managing director. I would have almost certainly reported that in a meeting with him. I don’t have any records.

Q939 Chair: Who was the managing director?

Alan Wainwright: At the time I think it was a guy called Brian Tock. It was originally Roger Robinson, who is now at Laing O’Rourke, but Roger moved on in the business and Brian Tock took over. My recollection is that my boss at the time was possibly Brian Tock, or it could even have been Roger Porter. I had four bosses in six years.

Q940 Chair: Why would you have discussed this with them? You had been told to implement it by Frank Duggan, and surely you just did it.

Alan Wainwright: I report everything I am doing through to my boss. I meet my boss at least two or three times a month. When I was based in Carillion in head office and I reported to Roger Robinson, I would meet him once, twice or three times a week because I was in the same set of offices, but we were in different offices. I would certainly have discussed something like that with him-that we had this instruction and I had introduced this. That was along with lots of other things, Chair, that I was introducing and changing.

Q941 Chair: I understand that. We do not want to go into the thousands of other things. I just wanted to clarify that the people above you in the hierarchy were also aware of this.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q942 Mike Crockart: I wanted to pin down exactly what was said in the discussions that you had with Ian Kerr. You glossed over the fact that it was details of individuals who were causing difficulties in projects or something along those lines. Was that the extent of the information that you were given about why he held information about those individuals?

Alan Wainwright: I can’t remember exact specifics, but I am pretty sure that he showed me these database records to print off, and then he showed me that he had a description on that. It was 1997, and I can’t recollect exactly what was said on that or the context of what was written in there, but there was clearly a description in there. As I described earlier, that is my recollection of that meeting 15 years later.

Q943 Mike Crockart: I am just trying to pin down what the purpose of the database was. It was quite obviously to make sure that those people weren’t employed on projects because they were going to cause difficulties to those projects.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q944 Mike Crockart: Was there specific mention made of trade union membership at that time, or was it more general?

Alan Wainwright: I can’t remember; I am sorry.

Q945 Jim McGovern: When you first became aware of this, Mr Wainwright, were you immediately uncomfortable, or did you just think it was part of your job?

Alan Wainwright: Looking back, everybody had a little black diary before the days of iPhones and things, and I remember I had this guy Ian Kerr’s number in this diary. At the end of the year, you would throw your diary away and you’d start again. I remember that I kept this. Every time I went to throw this diary away I remembered I had this Ian Kerr’s number in that, and I probably didn’t throw it away for three or four years because deep down inside me I knew that this could be important at some time in the future. It was very much the same when I moved to Drake & Scull. I am jumping ahead, but I am happy to jump back.

I had this memo and this list of 500 electricians, which were exchanged. I kept that for years and years, even though I moved out of the industry. I have it in my possession. Deep down something was telling me that something was not right with these pieces of information that I was holding on to.

Q946 Jim McGovern: Did you keep that diary because he was a good person to keep in touch with, or a nasty person?

Alan Wainwright: No; it was because I knew that something wasn’t right. I knew that his telephone number could at some point in the future become very important. I remember that I didn’t chuck this away, and then, when I really needed it and went looking for it, I realised that I had chucked it away.

Q947 Lindsay Roy: Let’s be clear. As part of your job you were instrumental in creating a blacklist for Carillion. Is that the case?

Alan Wainwright: I don’t think that I was instrumental in creating it. Basically, I did what I was asked to do as a manager, from an instruction from a director. My involvement was in setting this process up. Initially the lists were faxed off to Ian Kerr, but then, after about two or three weeks, he called me and said, "These are now going to go back straight down to Frank Duggan’s office via Anne Johnson." I don’t personally think that I have been, as you say, involved in creating blacklists. I have never contributed any information towards it or provided any information about anybody. I was just following an instruction, as an employee, to introduce the system.

Q948 Lindsay Roy: The system was presumably to create a blacklist.

Alan Wainwright: No; my instruction was to fax the names of anybody who applied for work via this process.

Q949 Lindsay Roy: Via Ian Kerr.

Alan Wainwright: Yes, via Ian Kerr. That was then changed to fax through Carillion’s head office, via Frank Duggan’s office, via his PA. After two or three weeks of getting this up and running, I then got the instruction, which I am pretty sure came from Ian Kerr, and I would have tied it up with Frank Duggan’s office.

Q950 Lindsay Roy: What was the nature of your relationship with Ian Kerr and how frequently were you in contact with him?

Alan Wainwright: I met him once in 1997. I am pretty sure I met him again probably one or two weeks later for another small meeting. We then probably introduced the system; so I may have spoken to him once on the telephone. After that, I never spoke to him or heard from him again because we just faxed the names down to Carillion’s head office as instructed. It went through Frank Duggan’s PA. I am pretty sure her name was Anne Johnson. I have gone on record as saying Anne Johnson, but I know it was Frank Duggan because he was the personnel director. I would just get a call personally to me if somebody on any of those lists was not to go. As I have said in written evidence to you, I am pretty sure that was no more than five. If you go back to what Ian Kerr said to me in that meeting, we were the first company in the M&E sector to introduce that. He was looking to roll that out to all the other member companies who had associations with M&E companies.

As the noes are coming back in 1998-2000-and there aren’t that many-I imagine as more and more M&E companies come in throughout the following years, when I have obviously left the industry, his database grows. I see it as a curve of the information Ian Kerr holds, because more and more checks come through, and more and more companies are giving him information as per the evidence I have supplied to you.

Q951 Lindsay Roy: Were there other people from the CA that you were in contact with?

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q952 Lindsay Roy: So it was just Ian Kerr.

Alan Wainwright: It was just him, and again it was very brief.

Q953 Chair: For what purpose exactly were the names being submitted to the Consulting Association? Was it because if they were in the CA’s records they could be refused employment?

Alan Wainwright: They were only refused employment if I got a call back from Frank Duggan’s office to say, "This person shouldn’t go on site." All I am doing is introducing a process into the recruitment process, which is centralised, so all labour recruitment is coming through me. A list would go off once a week for anybody who had been submitted via the recruitment agencies. Agency labour is high turnover, because they go for the hours and they move and everything. We have 30 leaving a week and we have to get 30 more for the sites. My job was to just make sure those sheets went down to Carillion’s head office, and then if I didn’t hear anything back we would start up who we needed from the recruitment agencies.

Q954 Lindsay Roy: What prompted you to reveal this information about blacklisting?

Alan Wainwright: I am wondering how great an amount of detail you want me to go into.

Q955 Chair: Maybe we could come back to that. Maybe we could go through it more methodically. You weren’t checking the names yourself, nor were you supplying information to the blacklist. [Interruption.] Some of my colleagues have other Committees and will go and come back. That is the difficulty for us, I am afraid.

Alan Wainwright: Chair, I usually make that impression on people.

Chair: No; we have to apologise for that. You didn’t check the names yourself. You didn’t supply information about people. You simply put in the list. The process of communication was that you sent things in and then stuff came back. There would be no paper trail in that.

Alan Wainwright: There is a paper trail down, because in our recruitment database I have actually written a couple of lines of code to put their names in and then to print off a reasonable spreadsheet-type report that we could fax down to Carillion’s head office.

One other important point, which may be important in relation to data protection, is that I remember writing a piece of code into the Carillion database that we had. If a name came back as a "no", then a marker would be put in the database to save us redoubling a check. I think that then makes Carillion a data controller legally. If you look at when I left, as I say, there were at most probably only five noes, and then I find out through the evidence-especially the evidence on Friday-that there were so many. Carillion are holding the data in that database, if they continued using it after I left, and I can’t see any reason why they would stop.

Q956 Lindsay Roy: At that time, did you know why the decision was "no" when people were rejected?

Alan Wainwright: No, I was never told. I am pretty sure I was told that there would be no discussion. It would just be, "It’s a no."

Q957 Chair: If you submitted a name and it came back as a no, you would then have an entry in your database so that, if the person reappeared, you wouldn’t bother sending it on again.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q958 Chair: That effectively means that Carillion themselves were also operating a blacklist.

Alan Wainwright: Yes, it certainly does. As I say, we only possibly at most had five noes when I left.

Q959 Chair: But the principle is right.

Alan Wainwright: Yes, absolutely, Chair.

Q960 Chair: I had not quite realised that point. Presumably, then, the assumption would be that other firms who were accessing the Consulting Association database were also themselves making notes in their own data equipment about individuals in order to stop asking the same question and being charged twice.

Alan Wainwright: It was common sense. I am a very practical person, which is why I got that job. You just look at things and say, "Let’s not duplicate this." It is a very small task, Chair, in the many jobs I had. It was not as if I was just doing this and this was my job.

Chair: I understand that.

Q961 Lindsay Roy: How many companies are you aware of that were involved in this blacklisting operation?

Alan Wainwright: At what point in time?

Lindsay Roy: Initially and then thereafter.

Alan Wainwright: In 1997?

Lindsay Roy: Yes.

Alan Wainwright: I wouldn’t know. All I was told by Ian Kerr was that he had this function with a number of major construction companies.

Q962 Lindsay Roy: He didn’t mention these names to you.

Alan Wainwright: My recollection was that he mentioned Bovis, but when I have looked back at all of the evidence since, I have never seen Bovis anywhere. I don’t know where, but I think I have just spotted a Bovis. I always think maybe I was wrong about Bovis and it might have just been me making a mistake, because, again, it was 15 years ago.

Lindsay Roy: I understand that.

Alan Wainwright: I just had this thing in my mind that he mentioned Bovis.

Q963 Lindsay Roy: Subsequent to 1997, what other information did you find out about companies that operated blacklists?

Alan Wainwright: Do you want me to move right ahead now?

Q964 Lindsay Roy: I just want you to give me an indication of other companies.

Alan Wainwright: I moved to Emcor Drake & Scull briefly, as I say, and then it is in the evidence I have submitted. I think it was August 2000 that the group personnel director of Emcor Drake & Scull, Sheila Knight, distributes a memo to the labour managers and me with a list of 500 mechanical and electrical operatives from three projects. One was the Pfizer contract and one was the Royal Opera House. Both of those were Balfour Kilpatrick, which was a Balfour Beatty subsidiary. The other one was the Jubilee Line extension, which was an Emcor Drake & Scull/Sir Robert McAlpine joint venture. She sent out this list, and that is the list I kept. That is when I find out that within Emcor something is certainly happening, but I leave soon after-it must be about a month after-and I really don’t have much more to do with that then.

Q965 Lindsay Roy: That is evidence you have given us here, which is very helpful.

Alan Wainwright: It is certainly evidence I have given you. I have it all here. Do you want me to find out exactly where it is?

Q966 Lindsay Roy: No; we are just confirming that this is the information you are talking about.

Alan Wainwright: Yes. It is Appendix 4. I didn’t want to fill this with the list of 500 names.

Q967 Lindsay Roy: How tightly controlled was the information about blacklisting?

Alan Wainwright: How technically controlled?

Lindsay Roy: How tightly controlled was it? How closely controlled was it?

Chair: How many people knew?

Alan Wainwright: Going back to within Carillion, I never discussed it with any of my department and I was never told to. It would only have been my boss that I discussed it with, and Kevin Gorman, who was the HR manager, who gave me the instruction that I was to meet Ian Kerr. That had come down from Frank Duggan.

Q968 Lindsay Roy: So it went to the very top.

Alan Wainwright: Frank Duggan was the group personnel director of Carillion plc.

Q969 Chair: Was it the same sort of structure in the other firms you were working for, whereby you knew and those above you knew?

Alan Wainwright: Let’s move to Emcor Drake & Scull briefly. I don’t think that they were operating the Consulting Association database then. Based on the evidence that I’ve picked up in the last weekend, it looks like they moved on to do so. We are not dealing with the Consulting Association; we just have this exchange of names and the labour managers have an instruction to contact Michael Aird up at Balfour Kilpatrick-the Balfour Beatty subsidiary-because it is a list of 500, so if they are going to recruit anybody they have to check with him from that list.

I subsequently find out, and I will give you the evidence, that Michael Aird is all over the Consulting Association records as supplying those names into the Consulting Association database. Up until last week, I didn’t know that.

Q970 Chair: Drake & Scull themselves were not consulting the-

Alan Wainwright: At that point.

Chair: That is right. They were not consulting the Consulting Association; they were contacting Balfour Beatty, who you believe were consulting with the Consulting Association.

Alan Wainwright: Yes, with Michael Aird. I then find out, and I have submitted it in written evidence to you, that those names from the Drake & Scull project eventually end up on the Consulting Association’s database. If you go to 2(a), the list of company codes and companies, it is faded so I can’t identify Emcor Drake & Scull. Michael Aird may have submitted the Drake & Scull names; I am not sure. We would have to look at the evidence.

Moving on, ask me your question again so we can recap on it.

Q971 Chair: Before Jim comes in, was the third firm, Haden Young, operating there directly?

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q972 Chair: They were consulting the Consulting Association directly.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q973 Chair: Who knew in Haden Young?

Alan Wainwright: The personnel director, Prue Jackson.

Q974 Chair: Only he and you.

Alan Wainwright: She knew.

Chair: Sorry, "she".

Alan Wainwright: The person who told me that they had to run these checks was the labour manager, Neil Capell. These checks had to go via the personnel director’s office through her assistant, Frieda. They were faxed down to her, so Prue Jackson was the contact with the Consulting Association. I can’t say whether Neil Capell knew about the Consulting Association. All he said is, "We have to do these checks." I then phoned Prue Jackson and said, "Look, I’ve found out that we do these checks and they’re coming down to you." We had a brief conversation and I said, "Is this the Ian Kerr Consulting Association?", and she confirms at that point that it is.

Q975 Lindsay Roy: Who was it that contributed the names for the blacklisting? Was it employment agencies, supervisors or who?

Alan Wainwright: Let us put that into context, based on the limited evidence that I have submitted to you. I have probably submitted 20 pages to you. From the 3,200 workers, there are probably 20,000 pages. We can agree it is somewhere between 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000, of which I have seen 20. That represents 5% to 10% of what Ian Kerr had. In those 20 pages I am able to identify everybody I had. Do you want me to name them? Frank Duggan is on there from Carillion. Liz Keates is on there accessing and supplying information. Kevin Gorman is on there. There are Sandy Palmer and Dave Aspinall from Carillion’s own agency, NCS, in there. Michael Aird is in there from Balfour Kilpatrick, from the Balfour Beatty group. There is Prue Jackson, the personnel director. There are only initials on there, but I have done my very best to identify who those actual people are. Prue has acknowledged to me and confirms to me that she is dealing with him, so I know that PJ is Prue Jackson at Haden Young, the Balfour Beatty subsidiary.

Q976 Lindsay Roy: How was this service paid for?

Alan Wainwright: I never had anything to do with the payment.

Q977 Lindsay Roy: Did you see any invoices?

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q978 Chair: Were you aware of any transactions that occurred?

Alan Wainwright: No. What happened was that within Carillion I was based in head office, but I live in north Wales. We set up a central department in the Manchester office. I am pretty detached from head office.

Q979 Chair: But you didn’t have anything to do with the payment aspect of it.

Alan Wainwright: I never had anything to do with that.

Q980 Chair: You didn’t know the charging mechanism.

Alan Wainwright: I think it was 50p a name at the time.

Q981 Chair: Have you learned that since, or did you know at the time?

Alan Wainwright: I am pretty sure my recollection was that it was 50p a name.

Q982 Chair: So when this scheme was being operated, you knew that it was a charge per entry.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q983 Chair: That justifies why firms would want to have their own mini-blacklist, as it were, to avoid having to pay the 50p over and over again. I can see that.

Alan Wainwright: Yes. I would just add to that, Chair, if you don’t mind. I mentioned before that I saw this curve. I am out of the business, but Carillion have gone on record trying to say, "We didn’t use this after a certain point." There comes a point where you can only check every person in the construction industry. You have all these construction companies doing it and all these mechanical and electrical companies doing it. Eventually there will come a point where they most probably don’t need to do the check because they have exhausted every person who is working in that semi-recruitment. If you look at companies like Crown House, we had 1,800 directly employed. Haden Young had a large directly employed work force. They would work for you for ever, so it is only the temporary agency workers that are working in the flexible market.

I am pretty sure, looking at what I have learned and the amount of information that has come through Carillion and Balfour and how this has escalated after I left the industry in 2000, that there comes a point where you most probably don’t need to do too many checks from then on, five years later.

Q984 Lindsay Roy: You are saying there is about 80% or 90% saturation.

Alan Wainwright: That is my personal opinion. There are very few new people coming through. I was an apprentice electrician, but then apprenticeships stopped, didn’t they, or reduced? I was an apprentice electrician in 1979, but then you find there are less and less apprenticeships. Even though Carillion will say, "We have this apprentice business", which I worked in, they get paid for those.

Q985 Jim McGovern: As you have said, you served your apprenticeship as an electrician. We had a couple of retired electricians from Dundee, my own home city, giving evidence here about how they ended up on the blacklist. When did you first become uncomfortable with it? You have said you would get correspondence coming back saying, "This person is a no."

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q986 Jim McGovern: Did you ever wonder why they were a no? Did you question it or did you just accept it? When did you first become uncomfortable with it?

Alan Wainwright: As I say, in my early days in my involvement with it, I probably had at most five noes. I say "at most"; it may be two or three. That was spread over a couple of years because it was in its infancy. It is not something that was a big part of my job. It was just a check. I would just get this phone call to say, "Do not let this person go on site."

Q987 Jim McGovern: Did you never wonder about it?

Alan Wainwright: Obviously, as I say, deep down; that’s why I’m keeping this information about Ian Kerr. Deep down I am thinking that something is not right, but I leave the industry. I am out in 2000, after two years plus, so I am not working in the industry. It is really not relevant to me. Then I return and go to work for Haden Young. We have not started recruiting. We don’t recruit when I start in mid-2004. We don’t start recruiting until the following January. That is when I find out, as I have mentioned to you, within Haden Young, the Balfour Beatty subsidiary, that they operate this procedure.

It was almost at the same time, because I am making lots of changes to this department. I conduct an investigation into the operative bonus scheme and produce a report on a 30-year operative who is basically involved in fiddling the bonus scheme, for want of a way to put it better.

Q988 Jim McGovern: Obviously you were off the tools by this time.

Alan Wainwright: Yes; I am the manager. I was off the tools aged 25, when I set up my own recruitment agency. I had a discussion with Prue Jackson, and I then find out that Haden Young are operating this procedure and the name checks are starting to go through there. At the same time, I make this disclosure about being asked to cover up fraud by the regional director. I make this disclosure to Prue Jackson, the personnel director. It wasn’t a good thing to do, because they basically just turned on me and froze me out. It was a pretty difficult time, and I ended up being off work sick with work-related stress.

Then we go through the process of me going through the grievance procedure to raise a grievance about the way I had been treated. It was in the first part of that grievance procedure that I raised the issue of the company operating this blacklist procedure. I said, "I am really concerned that because of what’s happened you are going to put me on it and prevent me from gaining employment." It all depends how much detail you want to go into on that.

I then go through two grievance procedure meetings. I am off sick. I lose £15,000 in income. I am not losing that money for a reason. I am raising this constantly in correspondence and they are just ignoring it. Prue Jackson is just ignoring it and denying it. I even write to David Beck, the managing director, and he is ignoring it. I just end up resigning the following January.

Q989 Jim McGovern: Were you raising it because you felt it was wrong, or because you thought you might be on it?

Alan Wainwright: Both. As I say, from when I find out that this is going on to when I actually make this disclosure about the bonus scheme it is only a matter of weeks. It is not as if I stayed with this system for six or 12 months. These two incidents coincided.

Q990 Lindsay Roy: Have you ever attended any Consulting Association meetings?

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q991 Lindsay Roy: So you have no idea what was discussed at the meetings at all.

Alan Wainwright: No, not at all.

Q992 Lindsay Roy: No feedback from Ian Kerr as to how the thing was organised.

Alan Wainwright: Nothing at all.

Q993 Chair: Did you know that any meetings took place?

Alan Wainwright: No. Do you know what? I didn’t think that people were meeting him. I just thought we set up this checklist.

Q994 Chair: That resolves a whole area of questioning, if you weren’t aware that there were any meetings. That has covered a number of points very helpfully. Did you ever discuss blacklisting at all with any other managers in other companies? Presumably you speak to people in the industry on a whole number of different occasions, such as networking, Christmas dos and stuff like this. Did this come up in conversation at all? Was this discussed?

Alan Wainwright: I can’t recall. There may have been a passing conversation back with a guy at NG Bailey, but I am talking as early as 1997. That was with the labour manager, John McDonald, I think. There may have been a passing conversation. If I can remember, the conversation was that he had a list in NG Bailey, or they had their own system. That is the best I can remember.

Q995 Chair: Were you personally aware of how any of the names went in and how people were put on the blacklist as such? I want to be clear about this. Did you have any knowledge as to why people got themselves on the blacklist or particular examples, apart from just the general idea that they were troublemakers or stuff like that?

Alan Wainwright: The only example I can give is the one I have given in my written submission to you. There was a conversation with the HR manager, Kevin Gorman, at Carillion. We had had some issues on a project. I have actually said it was a project in Hull, but in my written submission I have put that I think it was Grimsby. I am from north Wales and, with no disrespect to Grimsby or Hull, they are both similar and it was a long time ago. There were two guys on there who were the union representatives representing the workers. I went to an ACAS meeting in Leeds. I think we got to the bottom of it all and sorted it all out, but, as best as I can recall it, I remember Kevin Gorman in a passing comment to me saying that they had been "well taken care of". He was aware that I had introduced this checking system. That is as best as I can recall it.

Q996 Chair: The assumption "well taken care of" would mean they would then be put on the blacklist.

Alan Wainwright: Yes. In the evidence that has come into my possession last Friday, those two guys are in there. I have produced evidence to you and I have detailed it.

Q997 Chair: That is right, but there is a difference between evidence that has come into your possession and evidence that you can personally attest to. Unless I am mistaken, the only cases of people being put on to the blacklist of which you are personally aware are these two with Kevin Gorman. Is that right?

Alan Wainwright: Yes. The good thing about it for me is that I have been saying all these things for years and now the proof is coming forward that absolutely everything I have said is the truth. The Kevin Gorman thing is there. It is like the Jubilee Line extension and Pfizer and all of that. That is all coming through. Only last Friday I have seen that that is in the Consulting Association database. This is the first time I have ever seen files that have not been redacted.

Q998 Chair: You weren’t personally colluding at any stage with other managers, with union officials or anybody else to put people on blacklists.

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q999 Chair: Given that personally you know how only two people got on the blacklist-and that was because they were union representatives doing "uniony" things, as it were-

Alan Wainwright: Yes; there was an issue over pay on site.

Q1000 Chair: You don’t know how the others got on. You would assume that it was for roughly similar things, but you have no direct knowledge about it.

Alan Wainwright: I have no idea.

Q1001 Lindsay Roy: You have no evidence, for example, that it was around health and safety issues.

Alan Wainwright: I don’t have any evidence of that.

Q1002 Chair: I want to clarify this. In terms of Ian Kerr’s activity, were you aware of him pushing his wares anywhere else around the industry? We have heard how he got to you. Were you aware of any sign of him anywhere else in the industry?

Alan Wainwright: No, because I leave the industry. I am out in 2000 and I don’t come back until four years later. Then we are not recruiting until the following year. I find out and then, as soon as I find out, based on the way they treat me, I am then off sick. So it is probably only two months or a month perhaps.

Q1003 Chair: If it had been something very high profile, it might none the less have come up in conversation when you were meeting people.

Alan Wainwright: It didn’t.

Q1004 Chair: We just want to clarify some of these things. There have been rumours of blacklisting flying about in the building industry for a long time. In many ways it could be described as an open secret. Why do you think it took so long for firm evidence to emerge?

Alan Wainwright: One, it was obviously very covert and very secret. Secondly, look at what happened to me. Look at what happens when you stand up. People were probably very scared to come forward and mention things. The first answer is probably the more logical one. It was just so very covert and kept between a tight-

Q1005 Chair: Why was it covert?

Alan Wainwright: Like you said, they don’t want it to come out, I suppose.

Q1006 Chair: On the basis that it was indefensible.

Alan Wainwright: Yes. Preventing people from getting work is not a very nice thing to do, is it?

Q1007 Chair: Obviously we are trying to clarify what evidence there is about the scale of it. We are trying to separate the general assumption from a lot of people in the industry that it was widespread from the actual evidence we have, which is a bit like a light in a dark room. There is a narrow beam and we have just happened to identify where the beam shines. We are not entirely clear what else there is in the room. The difficulty for us is in trying to clarify with you whether or not there was any other information floating about at that time that would have helped to illuminate the situation.

Alan Wainwright: There certainly wasn’t. If you look at what I am saying-that the 20 pages I have submitted are part of 20,000 and that then represents 5% to 10%-I only get that last Friday. I then work all weekend because I am matching all this up to my written submission to you. I am not going to say too much, because you might want to keep some of that private, but I go into great detail.

Q1008 Chair: If you have sent us anything in writing, then that goes on the website and is then public, unless it was specifically marked "Confidential" or "Secret", in which case we then consider whether or not it should be retained. All the evidence we get goes out into the public domain.

Alan Wainwright: What I am saying is that I only got evidence last Friday and I have been involved in this for six years. As you say, you got a bit of light and last Friday I got a bit more light. It then enabled me to give you some more light. We need more of this.

Q1009 Chair: Are you aware of anybody involved in operating the blacklist being punished, suffering any sanctions, being sent for retraining or anything like that?

Alan Wainwright: Am I aware of anybody?

Q1010 Chair: Anybody who was actually involved in the blacklisting process as personnel directors.

Alan Wainwright: The ones I have named. I have named them all. Do you want me to name them again?

Q1011 Chair: No. I asked whether or not you are aware of any of these people being punished in any way for operating the blacklist.

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q1012 Chair: Neither were we. We genuinely don’t know the answer to some of these questions and we are asking you to try and cast light on them.

Alan Wainwright: Yes; I understand that.

Q1013 Chair: Have you ever been aware of any of the professional associations of personnel directors or human resource professionals and so on saying things about blacklisting, which were then circulated to their members to indicate that they were disapproved of?

Alan Wainwright: No, Chair.

Q1014 Jim McGovern: My own background is in the construction industry. I was a tradesman as a glazier. Sometimes I had a struggle trying to get employment. Do you believe that blacklisting is still going on in the construction industry?

Alan Wainwright: I didn’t. As I say, I have been out of it again now since 2005 so I don’t have any direct knowledge. I am only going on my personal opinion. I think to myself, "I don’t think it is", but then I find out that the Consulting Association only recovered 5% to 10% of the files. I think, "What happened to the rest of the information? What has been done with that?" If he had this fully functional in the construction industry, and then in 1997 he is rolling it out into the M&E sector-and I have said to you that this is his business then-if you look at what I was talking about with the curve, it becomes saturated, and so he is probably running out of revenue income from construction and is now moving into M&E. What other sectors has he moved into? I don’t know, but, if you look at the logical process of his business, has he carried it forward and sold the process into lots of other sectors? It would make sense that he did.

Q1015 Jim McGovern: My background is in the construction industry, and people in my constituency know that. They also know that we are carrying out this inquiry. Over the past three, four or five months, numerous people have approached me and said, "It’s still going on; I can’t get a job because I am a shop steward or a trade union rep."

Alan Wainwright: Let me come in there. I have put in my written submission to you about Kevin Gorman, who was at Crown House. When David Clancy from the ICO contacted me in 2008, I wrote in a previous submission to you that I said, "Go and speak to this guy Kevin Gorman; he is at Bristow Helicopters in Aberdeen. Go and speak to Frank Duggan." Kevin Gorman then moves from the construction industry to Aberdeen as an HR manager. Bristow crews the rigs. That is what I have suggested to the Committee. If there is anything in the offshore industry, then maybe Kevin is the person to speak to.

The other thing on my mind, while we are focusing on Scotland, is this. In Carillion’s submission, they try and belittle it, saying, "We don’t do much work in Scotland." Every construction site I have worked on, either on the tools or being responsible as a manager, has had Scottish workers on it. They are all over the UK. I am sure you have considered that. Carillion and Richard Howson tried to say, "We don’t do too much work in Scotland." Scottish construction workers are everywhere I have ever worked and all over the UK. That is the relevance of this being a national thing.

Q1016 Jim McGovern: As regards the trade union involvement, my wife worked for a trade union for most of her working life. It was the AEU and now it is the AEEU-

Alan Wainwright: I was a member of the EETPU and then AEU when I was an apprentice electrician. They keep merging into other unions.

Q1017 Jim McGovern: It became Amicus and then Unite.

Alan Wainwright: Yes; now it is Unite. It will be something else soon, I believe.

Q1018 Jim McGovern: You are saying that Amicus, as was then, were aware of blacklisting.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q1019 Jim McGovern: Do you feel that they didn’t highlight it? Were they involved in it?

Alan Wainwright: Let me tell that story. I am going to a grievance meeting. Basically, I have been ganged up on by the directors about whom I have made the disclosure. These guys have all worked together, as I have put in my written submission to you, in Haden Young for 20 years. I raise this with Micky Tuff. He is the regional union representative. I am off sick at the time. He says, "Let’s meet in this pub the next day", and we meet at this pub somewhere in Shropshire. He gives me the forms and says, "We will get you rejoined into the union straight away and I will come to your grievance meeting", where he will come into possession of the blacklisting. I am going to go to a grievance meeting and say, "I am concerned that you operate this blacklisting procedure. I think you are going to place me on it."

He comes to the meeting. He comes to the second meeting. Around Christmas, before I have resigned, he says that he will write to head office to ask them to support me in a tribunal should I ever need to go there. We were talking about December/January. After I resigned he basically just went cold on me. I am pretty sure I have even found more. I have put in my written submission to you that I write to him three times. In fact, I write to him more than three times. I phone him and he is not taking my calls. My clock is running out because I have three months from the point I resign to start any proceedings. He is running my clock down, but I don’t know that at the time. All I know is that he is being really evasive.

In the end I write to him and say, "Look, you have not come back to me. You are ignoring me. I am going to have to pursue this myself." I go along and speak to a barrister and a solicitor. I track him down and get hold of him. I speak to him. Do you mind if I just look at my evidence to see what the exact conversation was?

Jim McGovern: No.

Alan Wainwright: I only find these contemporaneous notes in a book about three or four weeks ago when I was speaking to Guney, Clark & Ryan, who were the solicitors who were taking the High Court action. I had been helping them and they asked me lots of questions. Even though I have put on my website that Micky Tuff goes cold on me, I can give you a record that I took of the conversation at the time.

Basically I got in touch with him and said I was concerned that the union had had this blacklisting information for seven months and he was doing nothing about it. His excuse was, "We were waiting for your grievance procedure to end." I don’t need to look at it. I said, "The grievance procedure ended on 6 December, as you know, and I resigned in January." His response was, "No comment", and then the phone went down. I then knew that there was a problem there and they’d gone cold on me.

I then write to the then General Secretary, Derek Simpson. Without going into too great detail, I have put my three letters to him on my website. They are there and I have linked you to my website in my written evidence. They are quite in depth, and I couldn’t recall them here. I am asking for his help. I am asking why he is not doing anything about it now that they have had this evidence. He doesn’t even appear to write to any of the construction companies. I was a senior manager. As I mentioned earlier, I had held senior positions. I was not some madman on the loose making wild accusations, although that is what they were trying to make me out as. We now have proof that I wasn’t. There is a bit more, but did I answer your question? Sorry, I go on a bit.

Q1020 Jim McGovern: Yes; I think you did.

Alan Wainwright: There is one other point. Derek Simpson did write back to me twice. For some reason, I have absolutely everything else but those letters. My barrister at the time might have them. I have since written to the union, and again all of that information is on record on my website. I am asking Gail Cartmail if she can look into this. This union has now had all this blacklisting information for years and years and they have not done anything about it. I ask her for copies of the letter and she just says, "I am not going to do anything about it." I think she put it as "a wasted opportunity", but you can see the correspondence and all the letters on the website. They have all been up there for a few months now. I am not very happy with her, obviously.

Q1021 Chair: You obviously indicated there that part of the reason you pursued this was because you were worried about being put on the blacklist. You claimed that after 2006 you yourself were blacklisted.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q1022 Chair: What evidence do you have for that?

Alan Wainwright: Can I just go back because something has popped into my head, and then can you just ask me that question again, Chair, if you don’t mind? When I was at Haden Young I interviewed a guy for a managerial job called Neil Shah. I met him in the Haden Young offices. He was a pretty nice guy and he had a good knowledge of the industry. I looked at his CV and he had lots of small periods of employment with big gaps. I remember speaking to my boss, David Brindley, just to report back and to say how I felt about him. I said, "I thought he was a pretty nice guy but he’s just got these gaps in his employment." I distinctly remember David Brindley saying to me, "Don’t worry about Neil Shah. I’ve had him checked out. He won’t be working for us. He’s a troublemaker."

That then is my first indication that staff members are being discriminated against because I am already aware that the company now operates the blacklist. I would love to have a look through all the records this evening. I have since contacted Neil Shah’s wife because he has passed away. I didn’t know that. I tried to get hold of Neil Shah and I found his address. I have written to his wife. Unfortunately he passed away last year. I received a letter back from his wife to say that he passed away.

Sorry, Chair, go back to your question. Do you see that that links to the concerns about staff members?

Q1023 Chair: After 2006 or so you have alleged that you yourself were blacklisted.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q1024 Chair: What evidence do you have for that?

Alan Wainwright: I have my file from the Consulting Association, which is redacted. That means I don’t know who put me on the blacklist. It is three pages. I can let you have a copy. Would you like a copy?

Q1025 Chair: It would probably be helpful to add that to the record, if you don’t mind.

Alan Wainwright: It is basically three pages. I am on the Consulting Association’s database because I have given information to tribunals. I would mention one thing. In 2006 I produced this website. I helped a few electricians with their cases against their employers. There was one case-Acheson and others v. Logic Controls-where the hearing was in January 2007. I give evidence. I produce a witness statement, the same as I have done for some other people, and they win that case. That is the first opening. I don’t know what my judgment is because I don’t find my judgment out until March. We win that one and I remember thinking, "God, I wish I’d have had this Chair", because he was just so understanding. I swear he was rolling his eyes on day one. It wasn’t good.

My blacklist file is about giving information at tribunals. The point about this is that the tribunal was against a company called Logic. That was a two-man-band subcontractor of a subcontractor of Balfour Kilpatrick, who was the main contractor. You have this very small company. We turn up for the tribunal and they have Ronald Thwaites QC as their barrister and a solicitor. Straight away I am thinking, "This guy’s famous. This guy represents the stars. What’s he doing here representing this company Logic Controls?" You have to look back at the transcript for his line of questioning, but he basically comes after me along the lines of, "You have a vendetta against Balfour Beatty", and, "Why are you mentioning Balfour Beatty?"

My answer to that-and it was a very genuine answer-was that I understood that the case was a joint case, Logic Controls v. Balfour Kilpatrick. Because of some legal terms, the barrister has decided there wasn’t enough to deal with the Balfour Kilpatrick issue. I just said that was my answer. We found out we won that tribunal. My blacklist file is for giving information at tribunals. There are press cuttings of the Logic one there. Linking to the staff position, there are names of other members who were staff members and who were on the file.

Q1026 Chair: I want to be clear. What are the bits of your file that have been sent to you that have been redacted? Are they the names of the people who put you on the blacklist?

Alan Wainwright: No. I don’t know who put me on the blacklist. My best guess is that because it was a Balfour Kilpatrick project-I had just given evidence against another Balfour Beatty subsidiary, Haden Young, and I don’t know my outcome-it would be someone in Balfour Beatty.

Q1027 Chair: Let me just be clear about this question of the redacted file. Certainly when files have been made available more widely they have been redacted, but I was under the impression that people were getting an unredacted version of their own file. Are you saying that you didn’t get an unredacted version of your own file?

Alan Wainwright: I didn’t get an unredacted version of my own file. The only files I have seen recently that are unredacted are the ones I was sent last Friday. Those files that I was sent last Friday are in the public domain because they form part of a tribunal that has already taken place. I am pretty sure that they have been sent to you.

Q1028 Chair: You would get your file from whom?

Alan Wainwright: From the Consulting Association.

Q1029 Chair: From the ICO.

Alan Wainwright: Yes.

Q1030 Chair: I was under the impression, obviously erroneously, that, when the ICO were providing people with their own files, those were unredacted.

Alan Wainwright: No; they are redacted. One electrician, Dave Smith, has clearly gone through some legal process to get access to that information. I don’t know what process he has gone through. I am pretty sure that in his evidence he has submitted all that to you.

Q1031 Chair: I want to clarify something in terms of the position of whistleblowers. Clearly, when you came out with all of this, there was no protection for you in these circumstances. Do you feel that the situation is still such as to provide no protection to whistleblowers, or are things better now?

Alan Wainwright: Absolutely not better now. One of the key things for me in this is the whistleblowing legislation. People are terrified. Look what happens if you come forward. You need only read through all the detail in the written submission of the way I was treated and how long it took to conduct two grievance meetings. They know I am not earning any money. The reason I know I am being frozen out is because I have already had a discussion with Prue Jackson about the blacklisting and we have acknowledged that it exists. Then she is denying it to me later on, so you know you are talking to somebody who is blatantly telling lies to you. You know you have a problem there. I asked for her to attend one of my grievance meetings because I wanted to speak to her face to face and say, "We have had this conversation and you are now denying everything in writing." Peter Barnes, who is the other director who conducts the grievance meetings, says, "I’ve decided that she shouldn’t come." I wanted to have a face-to-face conversation with her, look her in the eye and say, "You know we have had this discussion about the electrician Michael Shakespeare." There was an electrician, Michael Shakespeare, in that period, and Prue Jackson had called me to say, "He shouldn’t go to site; he’s a no."

Going back to the whistleblowing legislation, if you look at what happened with me, the person I had made the disclosure against and raised the issue about the fraud had been with the company 30 years. The regional director I had made the protective disclosure against about trying to cover up the fraud had been with the company 25 years. I then find out that the person tasked by Prue Jackson, the HR officer, who had been with the company for 15 years, had also worked for the company for 25 years and had emanated from the Glasgow office with Alex Currie, so they were pals. I also learned later on from my tribunal that it was David Beck who decided that Lawson Elliott should investigate my concerns. David Beck had been with the company for 40 years. So all these people-you get it, don’t you? You get where I’m going with it, don’t you, Chair? They spent 68 hours a week with each other for 25 years.

The whistleblowing legislation just didn’t cover that eventuality. I personally feel that in that situation, where you have directors who have worked there a long time, or in any situation when it goes so high, you need somebody independent. It is not somebody independent within the company, because you have this group of people who have worked together for so long. In fact, some of them have probably never worked anywhere else.

Q1032 Chair: Is there anything in particular that you think would make that situation much better for whistleblowers?

Alan Wainwright: Absolutely-an independent party investigating what is being put forward. I understand that you most probably can’t have that in all cases, because we have to be reasonable about what can be applied in industry, don’t we? If you had a helpline, you would basically have everyone ringing it and you would need departments of people. There are certain situations where people need to go.

I looked recently at this news about Jimmy Savile and all these people in these care homes who haven’t come forward. I see the Hillsborough evidence, and we find out about these policemen who aren’t coming forward. Nobody has come forward to say, "Look, we were asked to redact our statements." We are seeing more and more evidence across different industries of people who are just not coming forward. There is a reason why they are not coming forward. That is the key to it, Chair. That is what we have to get to the bottom of. What is stopping all these people from coming forward? The whistleblowing legislation just doesn’t help them.

Q1033 Chair: We are picking that up. On another point, are you aware of any links between construction companies and either the police or security services that would have led to people being put on the blacklist?

Alan Wainwright: No.

Q1034 Chair: That was never gossiped about.

Alan Wainwright: No. Don’t forget that I have not been in this industry, but the answer is no.

Q1035 Chair: Similarly, there is the question of company security officers attending Consulting Association events. You indicated to us earlier on that you had not been to any, and you weren’t aware of any of them taking place.

Alan Wainwright: No, I wasn’t.

Q1036 Chair: So you are not aware of anybody going to anything.

Alan Wainwright: No. I was aware since, because obviously I have evidence that has been given to me last Friday that meetings go on.

Q1037 Chair: There is obviously a difference between evidence that has come to you that you can pass on to us and evidence that you yourself might be able to give us.

Alan Wainwright: To the best of my knowledge, I have not.

Q1038 Chair: Let us now turn to the Carillion evidence that they have submitted to us in writing. You have expressed some comments, similarly, to us in writing. Do you want to expand on that at all, or just run through some of the main points with us for the record?

Alan Wainwright: Do you mind if I have a quick look at it? Would that be okay? As you can imagine, there is just so much here.

Chair: I appreciate that.

Alan Wainwright: What I generally picked up from the Carillion one was that they were trying to say that nobody at Carillion had anything to do with this; it was just a subsidiary and that ended in 2004. I then get back in touch with them and say, "Look, that certainly isn’t the case." I think I then speak to Dave Smith. I said to Dave, "What initials do you have?" Apart from this weekend I have probably only spoken to Dave once or twice in the past. It is not like I am part of this whole blacklist support group or anything. He reels off some initials. He has got an FD, which is Frank Duggan. He’s got Kevin Gorman; he’s got a LK-Liz Keates. Then I find out he’s got Sandy Palmer and Dave Aspinall from Carillion’s in-house recruitment agency. You also have a file with John Ball, who was the Carillion group HR manager. You have senior people in Carillion who are nothing to do with Crown House projects.

I think I worded it to you that, if what Dave was telling me was true, then these are all these people. I am looking at Sandy Palmer’s NCS project and Connah’s Quay power station. Sandy Palmer was my first boss and I didn’t know he had anything to do with it back then, but he was only my boss for about three months. Then Roger Robinson became my boss very briefly.

I then get this evidence at the weekend. If what Dave was telling me is true, these are these people within Carillion. That is when I produced my second submission. I am saying, "Here are the Consulting Association files", which are the ones I submitted as appendices. I have highlighted John Ball, Frank Duggan and Sandy Palmer. There are a couple from NCS. These are all Carillion people, not Crown House. We could go into greater detail on that, Chair, but I think that sums it up. If you are saying that everything is going to be published on the web, then I go into much greater detail, as you have seen.

Q1039 Chair: I think those are all the points that we wanted to raise with you. As I indicated to you earlier on, we normally ask whether there are any answers you have prepared to questions that we haven’t asked. Are there any points you want to make that you think we have not covered adequately so far?

Alan Wainwright: I know you are saying that you just have this small light and you are looking into it. What is starting to happen now is that certain MPs are saying, "We think the Information Commissioner should write to all of these people." I am thinking to myself, "What’s that going to do?" They have obviously suffered some detriment. They are not going to have the money to take a legal case. What needs to be done is a lot further than just writing to these people. They are going to need help. They are going to need £50,000 if they are going to put any case together, with barristers’ fees being £250 an hour. You will need a barrister and a solicitor. I just had a barrister. It was an unfair battle.

Q1040 Chair: I think we took the view that a lot of people out there didn’t know that they had been blacklisted. We had witnesses in front of us who had themselves been blacklisted and who were basically saying that they wondered if it was their own personal failure. Even if they decide that they can’t take legal cases forward, having an explanation as to why after all these years they have found difficulty finding jobs would provide them with a degree of explanation that was insufficient-

Alan Wainwright: You are absolutely right-it’s insufficient.

Q1041 Chair: But it was better than nothing. That is why we took that view. We were very disappointed at the relatively small number that had been identified and informed that their names were on the admittedly small proportion of the blacklist that had been discovered. That was an explanation for that.

Alan Wainwright: I would just like to make a point about David Clancy. As much as he only recovered 5% to 10% of anything, he has done more than anybody else I have seen to bring this matter to this stage. This is my gripe with Derek Simpson: if David Clancy hadn’t picked up on this and Derek Simpson did nothing about it at the union, this would still just be going on. There are key things that have just happened to bring us to this meeting today. One of them could have just not happened.

When we look at David Clancy and anybody who is thinking about being critical of him, I have managed departments, as I have said to you before, with all these things going on. Looking at the enormity of the task, he would probably have needed an army of people to drag the other 90% away and examine it all or whatever happens. He did more than anybody else. Without him, this would just all have still been going on, because I gave up hope. I tried hard and I tried hard, but I then have to start getting on with my life. I only get back involved when he phones me to say, "Look, we have uncovered this", and then it all came out in the news. So I put the blogs up just to put the information in the public domain and it helps me because I don’t have to think about this stuff. I don’t want to think about it. I have done enough and I have to get on with my life.

Q1042 Chair: No, no, I understand that. Are there any other factual points that you think we haven’t touched on that might be helpful? We are obviously going to go forward and bring in a series of other witnesses at one time or another from firms and so on. If not today, then perhaps you would write to us. That is the other thing that we say to people. If there is anything that occurs to you after leaving here that you wish you had said to us, or you thought you maybe got slightly wrong or the balance was wrong, by all means put it in writing. We will make it publicly available through the website. Again, all material that we get in, as the Clerk said before, is covered by privilege in these circumstances.

Alan Wainwright: I have a few things I want to talk about. I have written to politicians and I have had responses back. I have written to my MP and the MP for Chester, Stephen Mosley, and my local MP David Hanson. I have written to people like Jack Straw. They have all been aware of this, and they just write back with things like, "We brought in regulations in 1999", and that’s it. In 2007 I met with Bernard Carter at the DTI. He is some senior employment person. He was eventually tasked with drafting the regulations in 1999. I met him in January 2007 and again nothing was done. Last night I read through some of the letters of the politicians who evaluated this as I looked back through them and they said, "We have read Alan Wainwright’s judgment", and they considered my judgment.

I want to read out the final paragraph from my judgment because it is very important. This is from Alan McGarry, who was the Chair. "As to the alleged blacklist, our finding is that none existed (at least in relation to the claimant’s grade of employee) and Mr Wainwright’s fear that he would be placed upon one had no sound basis other than his own, rather wild assumptions arising out of an increasing mistrust of his employer which he has been unable to show was in any way justified."

That is how the Chair saw it; so then that is how the politicians are seeing me. All along I am telling the absolute truth about everything in this. That is why I have written to you in this submission and backed it up, because everything I have said was the absolute truth. I am only now able to start backing this up with evidence and that is what I have done over the weekend.

There is one final thing, and I finish with this in my written submission to you. If you look at these thousands of workers, how do we establish what detriment they suffered? It probably varies from people who have gone away and have actually done very well for themselves, but there is obviously then a decline in scale.

I mention this in my report, but I had a conversation with an electrician called Steve Acheson. He was the lead electrician in the Acheson v. Logic case, at which I gave evidence. He mentioned to me that he had learned that three electricians who were on the Emcor Drake & Scull Jubilee Line extension project had committed suicide. I called him last Friday. I said, "Look, Steve, I am attending the Select Committee. I want to take you back to that conversation and that point you made to me. Where did you hear it?" He said he heard it off a guy called Steve Kelly. I said, "I want you to phone Steve Kelly and tell him I am attending the Select Committee", because people say things and exaggerate them and make things up. He phoned me back 10 minutes later and said, "I have spoken to him and he gave me two names of electricians on the Jubilee Line extension project who had committed suicide in their 30s."

I can’t personally directly link that to them being blacklisted, but we don’t yet know about the detriment. You are right about this little light. We are right at the very beginning of finding out exactly how people have suffered. Going back to your point, there may be an explanation, but maybe that won’t be good enough in certain cases.

Chair: We do intend to keep digging into this and have a string of witnesses coming to us. We have not decided yet whether or not to produce an interim report and then a final report, but we do intend to keep this matter going forward. It only falls to me to thank you very much for coming along today and being so open with us in your evidence. I am conscious that one of my colleagues has just come back in order to allow somebody else to go. I don’t know whether or not Mike had a question he was bursting to ask. Thanks very much for coming back.

All I can say is that we thank you very much for coming along to see us and being so open and frank with us in your evidence.