“WE’RE not aware of it existing. If unions have evidence of malpractice by an employer they need to share it. Blacklisting is not the practice of a good employer.”

The now defunct Construction Confederation spokesman was right in 2008 when he said that blacklisting was not the practice of a good employer. But it was certainly a common practice.

A year later a former Greater Manchester police officer working for the Information Commissioner knocked on the door of a discreet building in the West Midlands and found incontrovertible evidence of systematic blacklisting.

Some of the country’s biggest construction firms had been funding a secret operation co-ordinated through an organisation called the Consulting Association.

Although only around 15 per cent of the association’s paperwork was seized, its records gave a rare glimpse into the building trade’s dirty secret.

Following on from the work of the notorious Economic League, the association kept files on more than 3,000 workers.

The common reason for being kept on a file was membership of a trade union and raising health and safety concerns.

The result was unemployment, financial hardship and thousands of lives ruined.

The funders were household names such as Sir Robert McAlpine, Carillion and Balfour Beatty.

And at the time it was not even illegal to blacklist.

On the 10th anniversary of the exposure of the blacklist, the revelations keep on coming.

A newly released police report proves that the police shared information with the blacklist over decades.

The Creedon Report into Operation Reuben, the internal police investigation into blacklisting was disclosed by the Metropolitan Police to lawyers representing the Blacklist Support Group, because of their core participant status in the public inquiry into undercover policing.

The key findings of the 70 page report include admissions that:

“Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, The Consulting Association.” (para 4.2)

“Special Branches throughout the UK had direct contact with the Economic League.” (para 13.1.2)

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch Industrial Unit spied on union members “from teaching to the docks, attending conferences, and protests personally, and also developing well placed confidential contacts.” (para 6.11)

Undercover police officer Mark Jenner, who infiltrated the construction union Ucatt gathered intelligence on “over 300 individuals.” (para 11.8.3)

Police sharing information with big business and other bodies about prospective employees continues to this day through the Industrial Liaison Section within the National Domestic Extremism Unit. (para 11.1.17)

Back in 2009, to suggest that the police might collude with corporations to target union activists would have got you labelled a conspiracy theorist. Now the police have admitted it is true.

In those last 10 years we have seen a number of responses to the blacklisting scandal. And each has demonstrated the limitations of institutions in dealing with this scandal.

One of the final acts of the Brown government was to make blacklisting illegal — though the law only makes it a civil offence and the respected Professor Keith Ewing has written extensively on how poorly conceived that law is.

The effect has been to stifle requests for more robust legislation. Those opposed to can point to the law in place and the lack of successful cases as evidence that no further action is necessary.

Parliament’s Scottish affairs select committee carried out an investigation, dragging several key industry players out of the shadows and laying bare the corporate arrogance and indifference.

Blacklisting was not a feature of the distant past but of cherished projects such as the Olympic Games and Crossrail.

Several MPs, as well as members in devolved parliaments, have repeatedly pressed for further information on blacklisting or tabled early day motions or debates.

The parliamentary inquiry was careful though not stray too far into looking at police and security service collusion.

Within days of the blacklist being revealed, union lawyers were preparing claims for industrial tribunals, but while more than 100 were lodged only a bare handful made it even to a hearing.

The reason was that some of the files stretched back decades and so they were ruled too old to be dealt with.

The blacklisted worker might only just have learnt why he had been discriminated against but the fact it happened years previously meant it was out of time.

Even when they did get heard the lack of protection for self-employed and agency workers meant they could not get compensation — a legal position upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2016, a group prosecution in the High Court of several companies by several hundred blacklisted workers won compensation running into the tens of millions.

It was a significant victory as a statement was read in court; a statement that did not include the word blacklisting.

But no company official was put in the dock. No company has admitted firing or disciplining any of its staff involved in the blacklisting operation.

The only person to face proceedings was Ian Kerr who ran the Consulting Association on behalf of the companies and he was cast on the scrap heap as soon as his presence became and embarrassment. Kerr was fined £5,000 for breaching data protection laws — a fine secretly paid by McCalpine’s.

But perhaps we should not be surprised at this failure as blacklisting and surveillance are the dirty habit industry that the government can’t seem to kick.

In 1986 a secret Whitehall committee called Subversion in Public Life (SPL) had estimated there were 50,000 potential subversives in the country including 1,420 who worked in the Civil Service.

Margaret Thatcher asked that the SPL also look into subversion of local government, education and the NHS.

It was suggested that education inspectors supply MI5 with details on suspect teachers. Central departments were encouraged to ensure people on the list were not put in sensitive roles or moved to posts where they could be isolated.

There is no indication the individuals were ever informed about their status; indeed the chairman of the SPL warned of the intense embarrassment if its activities became public knowledge.

At the same time MI5 had an officer in place at the BBC to vet potential recruits to the broadcaster while the Economic League had hundreds of thousands of files and contacts with companies across many sectors — as well as the security services.

Blacklisting crosses into many sectors. In 2015 Sir Robert Francis QC produced Freedom To Speak Up, a report into whistleblowing in the NHS.

Francis said that many people reported on fears that whistleblowing would have a detrimental effect on their career and received evidence of “vindictive treatment” of people who raised concerns.

The Consulting Association didn’t just stick to construction workers. Those in local politics, academia, journalism, the railways and the offshore oil industry all had files on them.

In particular the association kept records on several hundred environmental activists. These were of particular interest to the security services.

An officer in one of the police’s surveillance units even gave a presentation on its work targeting animal rights groups to the association.

There has long been a demand for a public inquiry into blacklisting and the closest so far is the Mitting inquiry into undercover policing.

Set up by Theresa May four years ago, it has yet to hear any evidence and has spent most of the time deciding how little information it wants to release.

With the help of journalists and dogged activists we do know that more than 1,000 groups have been spied upon and details on dozens of undercover officers revealed; including their fieldcraft manual.

Yet the Mitting inquiry remains the longest of long grasses for the police to keep any investigation into their activities.

Ten years on much has been achieved and exposed — but there is still much to do.

Phil Chamberlain is co-author of Blacklisted: The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists (New Internationalist).