Examination of Witnesses (Questions 290-299)
FEDERATION OF
MASTER BUILDERS
4 DECEMBER 2007
Q290 Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome to
the final part of this halfway point in the Committee's inquiry
into the construction industry in the UK. Can I ask, as I always
do, for you to introduce yourselves and explain a little bit about
the role of your organisation and why a trade association focused
on small and medium-sized firms is needed. We are getting rather
overwhelmed by the number of organisations. Yours is clearly one
we have heard of before, unlike some of them, but it would be
helpful to understand exactly why we need you and not the Construction
Confederation or the National Specialists Contractors Council,
or whatever it is.
Mr Diment: I am Richard Diment
and I am the Director General of the Federation of Master Builders.
My colleague is Brian Berry who is our Director of External Affairs.
As you said in your introduction Chairman, the FMB represents
SMEs in the building sector. We have about 13,000 of them as our
members. We are an organisation that was set up back in 1941,
which might seem an odd year to set up a new organisation but
we developed very much here in London and some of the other big
cities where the smaller builders felt that they were being squeezed
out of the market for repairs and work that needed to be doing
following the initial stages of the Blitz. Our members are still
very much the smaller companies. We have, as I said, 13,000 of
them. Typically they are companies with a turnover of round about
£100,000 to £500,000, mostly employing 1-5 people. They
work mainly in the domestic sector on general building though
they do a little bit of work for the commercial and the public
sector. A small number of them do build houses but only relatively
small numbers, so we think we have a fairly unique niche within
the sector. We obviously work very closely with our colleagues
in the Construction Confederation, which tends to represent larger
organisations and we have already talked about some of them today.
We also work closely with the specialist contractors but they
are by their nature more specialist organisations, we are a more
generalist one, and our membership does represent something like
twice the number of those two organisations' memberships combined.
Q291 Chairman: Presumably you would
advise us always to use a member of your organisation.
Mr Diment: I would certainly hope
you do.
Q292 Chairman: I thought you probably
would. Can I thank your Richard Hislop for his email this morning
on "The Federation of Master Builders takes up the green
challenge" which arrived in my inbox this morning. I am sure
this Committee's report will deal with those issues so thank you
for that, I will pass it to the Clerk. Your very first point was
about the appointment of a dedicated Construction Minister. You
have just heard our last witnesses, you were in the room, about
this extraordinary problem of co-ordination. Everyone wants a
minister to do their thing. Your members pay their taxes, I know
they hate the burden of regulation and taxation, and everyone
wants a minister, which means more government because if we give
it to you then manufacturing will want it, aerospace will want
it, pharmaceuticals will want it, they will all want it, and other
special interest groups within the Department of Health, the Department
of Communities and Local Government will want their ministers
doing their thing. We already know that there are too many ministers
so we will be about 400 ministers and no backbenchers in the Government-
which I suppose some of my colleagues on the Labour side might
like the prospect of—but is a Minister for Construction
really the only way? I think we all understand there is a problem
about overlap. Is that the only answer or if we come up with something
more imaginative might we be able to sell that to you as an idea
instead?
Mr Diment: The problem at the
moment is the diversification and the number of areas of government
that deal with this, as we have already heard from your previous
witnesses. The responsibilities for different parts of the industry
probably spread over seven or eight different government departments.
Even within the post of Minister for Construction—and I
am sure he will be a very good Minister for Construction—I
think if you read through, it is one of 22 responsibilities that
are actually listed on the official BERR website section on what
the minister does. It does cause confusion when we need to speak
and others need to speak, particularly those who are less familiar
with the structures of government, in never being quite certain
where you need to go if you are talking about construction regulations
or you are talking about health and safety in the construction
industry or training in the construction industry. Indeed, training
is now of course split depending whether it is still going on
at school or whether it has moved into the further education sector.
There is a whole plethora of your colleagues who are responsible
for this and we think it would be better to have a smaller number,
hopefully a single minister, but certainly much greater co-ordination.
Chairman: This is a negotiating position
rather than a bottom line? That is very helpful, thank you very
much. Mick Clapham?
Q293 Mr Clapham: Before I turn to
health and safety in the industry, could I just ask on the back
of your introduction you said that most of your members were concentrated
in London at the time that the organisation was founded. Is that
still the case or are they spread across the country?
Mr Diment: They are literally
spread across the four countries of the United Kingdom now and
fairly evenly spread.
Q294 Mr Clapham: Turning to health
and safety, we have seen a deterioration in health and safety
over the last two years in the industry generally. Have your members
reported that they too are experiencing a fall in health and safety
standards?
Mr Berry: The first thing we want
to say is that all deaths in the construction sector are deplorable
and the FMB is committed to improving health and safety in the
construction industry. We have not noticed any deterioration amongst
our own members. Any accidents and deaths would be reported under
RIDDOR—the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous
Occurrences Regulations 1995, but certainly the evidence we have
got from our insurance company Aon is that our companies are less
of a risk than others in the construction sector.
Q295 Mr Clapham: The reason I ask
is because you do make the point in your memorandum about the
fall in the number of HSE inspectors. As you will know, there
has been quite a dramatic fall, we are talking perhaps by 2008,
by next year, of a 17% fall in the staff of the HSE. Do you think
that it is the fall in the number of inspectors in the field that
is contributing to that deterioration in health and safety standards
in construction?
Mr Berry: We do not have specific
evidence to support that, but what it does give is the impression
that the Government is introducing new legislation, such as the
CDM regulations and then we have the Corporate Manslaughter Bill
coming but it is not putting the resources in to enforce the legislation
that it has passed. We are very concerned that, as you have said,
since 2002 there has been a 17% cut in the number of staff at
the HSE, and we understand in the review announced last year that
between 250 and 350 staff will be lost to the HSE by next year.
An employer has a one in 13 years chance of receiving a visit
from an HSE inspector so we feel that it is a contributory factor.
It is also the message it gives out to the construction sector
that the Government takes it seriously and, if you are imposing
more legislation, the very least the Government could do is make
sure that it is properly enforced.
Q296 Mr Clapham: Given that your
members are spread across the country and of course migrant labour
in the UK is also being used quite widely, are there any reports
from your members on the use of migrant labour? Does migrant labour
within your sector add to the greater vulnerability to the risk
of accident?
Mr Berry: The use of migrant labour
has been voiced as a concern in terms of the language barrier
and familiarity with health and safety legislation. It is interesting
that yesterday a report came out from the ICE, the Migrant Workers
Task Force, which has looked at this issue. I have not had a chance
to look at it in detail but it does flag up the issue of different
cultural backgrounds and the language problem but also the lack
of communication between employers and employees. I think this
is an interesting area to investigate. Also the HSE was asked
by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to break down
the figures for accidents and deaths on construction sites to
find out what role migrant workers were having on the 28% escalation
over the last year.
Q297 Mr Clapham: Do you feel that
there is the potential within your membership to perhaps try to
bring the insurance industry together with the employer to work
out, particularly where you have got sub-contractors being used,
a policy for a given site, for example if one could reach an arrangement
with the insurance industry that a good health and safety record
would result in lower premiums? Do you think that kind of approach
would help to tackle health and safety?
Mr Berry: Lower premiums would
be very attractive to good employers who actually instil health
and safety because one of the key issues with health and safety
is the cultural issue, how do we change culture on construction
sites. Good employers—and we hope most of them are FMB members—who
take these issues very seriously if they are going to be rewarded
with lower premiums, that is something that we would like to investigate,
yes.
Q298 Mr Clapham: Can I just go back
to the HSE, they charge your members for their Code of Practice.
Can you say what the charges are? Do you feel that charging for
the Code of Practice is a disincentive to buy it and so therefore
members are not knowledgeable of the Code of Practice that is
required?
Mr Berry: The Approved Code of
Practice costs £15, which is not a high cost in itself but
at a time when the Government is taking health and safety very
seriously, it is an extra cost which has to be paid and we feel
it is wrong to restrict information which could help to save lives
and certainly reduce the number of accidents.
Q299 Mr Clapham: So you do feel that
it constitutes a barrier to good health and safety standards?
Mr Berry: Barrier is quite a strong
word. It is another handicap and it is another cost to employers.
What we would like is to be able to download the information free
of charge rather than have to pay extra postage because if you
want to receive a hard copy free of charge it takes ten days but
if you are willing to pay £10 you can have it within one
working day. That is two-thirds of the cost of the Approved Code
of Practice. It would be far better if at the touch of a button
you could receive it free of charge and have the information immediately,
which I think would certainly be a helpful way to disseminate
the information.
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