Mr Umunna was expected to use today’s debate to say it was an “utter disgrace” that contractors who used TCA had not apologised for membership of the now closed organisation.

He was speaking the day after Sir Robert McAlpine non-executive director Cullum McAlpine admitted the firm had used TCA to vet employees for groundworks on the Olympic Park. The workers who were checked did not show up on TCA files, and Mr McAlpine said they were unaffected by the checks.

The group claims that “poor policy handling and illegal early cuts” led to a sudden slump in orders, cuts to profit margins, contract cancellations, damage to confidence, a surplus of inventory and thousands of redundancies.

All 17 individual claims are being consolidated by the High Court into a single claim against the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The case began as a £2.2m claim from three firms in July 2012, but has since ballooned.

Earlier this month it emerged that major contractor Breyer Group had become the most high-profile company to become embroiled in the row with DECC.

The legal action against the government from solar firms claiming lost earnings caused by illegal changes to the solar electricity feed-in tariff has swelled to £50m after more firms joined the action.

Prospect Law said it has issued a Letter Before Claim to the Department of Energy and Climate Change on behalf of a further five solar installation and construction companies, bringing to eight the number of firms taking action against the government.

The request brings the total demand for compensation of losses incurred by the unlawful cuts to the solar feed-in-tariff (FIT) to approximately £50m, up from the initial demand of £2.2m made in July.

Workers bidding to work on the London 2012 Olympic Games for Balfour Beatty were subject to blacklist checks, the firm has admitted.

Building can reveal a letter sent to Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) chief executive Dennis Hone from Balfour Beatty construction chief executive Mike Peasland (pictured below) said the firm, which built the Olympic aquatics centre, used the services of blacklisting organisation the Consulting Association (TCA) in 2008 to check on 12 prospective Olympics workers, all of whom were later employed.

An influential committee of MPs has called Sir Robert McAlpine director Cullum McAlpine, one of the figures most implicated in the blacklisting scandal, to appear in public next week.

The Scottish Affairs Committee has called Cullum McAlpine to give evidence to the committee next Tuesday as part of its ongoing investigation into blacklisting.

The news comes as the London Assembly passed a motion yesterday calling for the Mayor Boris Johnson to show that no blacklisting has taken place on the £15bn Crossrail project.

A £16m legal wrangle between the developer of the £1bn Pinnacle tower in the City of London and contractor Brookfield Multiplex has been settled, removing the imminent threat of insolvency from the stalled project.

As Building reported last month, the owners of the Pinnacle - the City of London’s tallest tower project - offered a settlement to end a legal dispute with contractor Brookfield Multiplex over £16m in unpaid fees.

Now Brookfield has confirmed it has reached an agreement with the owners of the scheme.

The worker, John Higgins, was 59 years old. He was killed at the Bishops Hall Lane station in Chelmsford in May 2008, when a transformer tap charger he was working on exploded.

The firm supplies power to the East of England, as well as London and the South East.

The £34 billion High Speed 2 rail link faces five High Court challenges from a group of 18 councils, Heathrow Hub Ltd, Aylesbury Park Golf Club and two from the HS2 Action Alliance.

The councils allege that the Department for Transport reached the decision through a flawed consultation and inadequate environmental assessment.

They are all members of the 51m Alliance, which is named after the estimated £51m cost of the project to each parliamentary constituency.

Morgan Lovell is being sued for over £1.3 million over allegations of failures with the air conditioning system installed in the McLaren Building, Birmingham.

The office design and build specialist, part of the Morgan Sindall group, was engaged by Bruntwood 2000 Beta Portfolio under a £4m contract signed in 2009, to carry out refurbishment works on the 21-storey building in the centre of Birmingham.

Construction firms are increasingly using payroll companies to "codify false self-employment" in the industry, robbing the Treasury of around £1.9bn a year and leaving workers without even the most basic of employment rights, according to a new report.

The study, the Great Payroll Scandal, has been commissioned by construction union Ucatt.

It claims that workers are forced to sign contracts with payroll companies in order to obtain work. While in reality the worker is an employee for the construction company, they are officially classed as self-employed. This means they can be sacked without warning, do not receive holiday or sick pay, have no pension provision and are denied access to employment tribunals.