McAlpine testified that the list was created in response to efforts in the 1990s to “disrupt the normal working day activities of construction companies” in violation of joint agreements put in place between employers and trade unions that covered safety, welfare and other matters.

An example of the disruption, he said, “was to abuse and ignore the tried and tested agreement.”

Reporting health and safety problems is never a disruption, he said, and anyone added to the list for doing so should not have been there.

Pamela Nash, a Labour Party member of Parliament, responded to McAlpine’s comments somewhat sarcastically by saying that his only reference was to listings concerned with how workers behaved on jobsites.

“Yet we have seen evidence of people ending up on the list just because they are members of a trade union or—shock, horror—a member of the Labour party or associated organizations,” she said.” Would you like to comment on why they might have been on the list?”

“I have no comment to make, other than that they should not have been on that list for those reasons,” McAlpine answered.

CrossRail and Frank Morris

The issues surrounding Frank Morris and whether there had been blacklisting after 2010 remain unclear.

Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Unite the Union, told the Parliamentary subcommittee in July that she was nearly certain of blacklisting on CrossRail but only had circumstantial evidence about BFK. Crossrail awarded the western tunnels contract to BFK in December 2010 and that work began in May 2012.

Officials of EIS, the subcontractor that directly employed Frank Morris, could not be reached. Industry sources say EIS has ceased operations.

While Morris was working on the CrossRail project, Cartmail testified, he was isolated and moved around in a “campaign of victimization and bullying.” To help protect himself, Morris sought the job as shop-steward and was granted it by his direct employer and the union.

When another employee raised a concern about safety on a part of the project, said Cartmail, BFK terminated EIS in September 2012. “We believe it did so to force Frank Morris out,” she testified.

Crossrail, speaking for itself in a statement to the Guardian about blacklisting, said it pursued only constructive relations with trade unions and that use of a blacklist in the industry “was indefensible. … Crossrail Limited is not aware of, and has seen no evidence of, blacklisting of any kind in connection with the Crossrail project."

With the announcement last month that Morris was reinstated and that BFK had not engaged in blacklisting, the matter remains murky.

Another contractor that is part of the compensation scheme and is at work on CrossRail, Wolverhampton, U.K.-based Carrillion, has told the Parliamentary subcommittee that it does not condone or engage in blacklisting and that it is “not aware of any evidence of contemporary blacklisting taking place with the construction industry.”

Since such activity was made illegal in 2010, Carrillion stated, “Any company found to be doing so would be breaking the law.”