Blacklisting scandal greater than phone-hacking row

As the blacklisting scandal continues to unfold, a leading Journalist, Seamus Milne, has said that the impact on the victims has been just as great as the phone-hacking scandal, but there has been no enquiry. Mr Milne says that in both scandals, the evidence of illegality, surveillance and conspiracy is incontrovertible. In both cases, the number of victims already runs into thousands. He states that the impact of the blacklisting scandal has already been felt in years of enforced joblessness, millions of pounds in lost income, family and psychological breakdown, emigration and suicides. But whereas David Cameron ordered a public inquiry into hacking, he rejected any investigation of blacklisting out of hand. The article in the Guardian newspaper states 'It's now clear that workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment for trade union activity - often on publicly funded projects and in collusion with the police and security services - by some of the country's biggest companies, using secret lists drawn up by corporate spying agencies.' The civil rights group Liberty has also equated blacklisting with phone hacking, insisting that the "consequences for our democracy are just as grave".

• Guardian