What a difference a year makes...
Last year I was at the seaside enjoying the calmness of the Liberal Democrat Party conference in Bournemouth. This year I was in the heart of Liverpool surrounded by an energised Liberal Democrat Party still taking stock of what happened in May and the fact they now form part of the new Coalition Government – the first for seventy years. It has certainly been a momentous journey for a party that had become accustomed to being out of office. However, the impending cuts in public spending loomed large across the conference hall and in the fringe meetings I attended. Jobs, skills, housing and the move towards a low carbon economy were high on the political agenda which provided a great opportunity for me to raise many of the concerns that the FMB has been working on over the last year or so, such as green jobs, apprenticeships, the need to get the house building back on its feet and continual investment in the construction industry.
THE GREEN DEAL
One of the key issues discussed was the forthcoming Green Deal which sets out to transform our building stock to make it greener and more energy efficient. Chris Huhne MP, Secretary of State for the Environment said the Green Deal could, ‘create a whole new industry that will help offset the drag anchor of the budget squeeze’ and would bring local jobs to ‘every community across the country’. Under the Green Deal scheme energy companies will pay up front for energy efficiency improvements and will recover their spending from energy bill savings that result. In a potentially significant move for the building industry, the Government has also committed to extending the Green Deal to cover businesses as well as households. It is expected that up to 250,000 jobs could be created as a result of the Green Deal.
VAT ON HOME IMPROVEMENT COULD BE REDUCED
At the fringe events I was able to link up Mike Leonard from the Modern Masonry Alliance to promote the ‘Get Britain Building’ campaign and the fact that the construction sector is the most realistic way to create the 2.5 million extra jobs that the Government wants to see in the private sector. I was able to challenge Andrew George MP and Roger Williams MP about the failure of the Lib Dems to translate their party’s election pledge to reduce VAT on home improvements. Both cited the need to reduce the budget deficit and said that they hoped VAT could be reduced at some point in the future. Speaking at a fringe event on investment, innovation and jobs in the low carbon transition I flagged up the need for any new work in the retrofit market to be given to reputable builders and warned of the danger of rogue traders trying to take the new work. The point was taken up by Greenpeace who asked me to speak at their fringe event on green jobs at the Labour Party conference.
CONSTRUCTION IS VITAL TO DELIVERING THE GREEN REVOLUTION
So, the following day I was back on the train to Manchester to attend the Labour Party Conference. Here I was able to join prominent speakers at the panel debate on ‘Green Jobs – Investing in Britain’s Economic Recovery’. The other speakers included Dr Alan Whitehead MP, member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee; Adam Lent, Head of Economic and Social Affairs, TUC; David Nussbaum, Chief Executive, WWF UK; Bob Flint, Commercial Director, Ceres Power; and Dave Seldon, Micropower Council (Chair).
The debate was an opportunity for me to welcome Ed Miliband’s mention of construction in his leader’s speech and to remind the audience (which mainly consisted of politicians, Labour Party members, senior campaigners and industry representatives) that construction was at the heart of where people lived and worked, and was vital to delivering the green revolution that all the main parties wanted. I warned that the building sector had been hit hard in the recession, a situation not helped by the abolition of regional housing targets, but that the need for retrofitting of our existing buildings to make them more energy efficient had the potential to create many jobs for small building companies as it is a market worth between £3.5 to £6.5 billion a year provided of course the right policy framework is put in place.
COMPETENT PERSONS SCHEME
Like others at the event I raised the concern that the proposed £6,500 for each property, as part of the Government’s ‘Green Deal’, was simply not enough, and that additional financial incentives would be needed to create the demand if it is to succeed. This was my opening to reiterate our long standing demand to cut the rate of VAT for repair and maintenance work on buildings as a means not only to help the building trade abut also to get the retrofi tting done. Finally, I raised the need to consider who was actually going to deliver the Green Deal as currently this an issue that the Government seems remarkably vague about, not helped of course because there is no formal registration system in this country for builders. A competent persons scheme would underpin the Green Deal and is an issue that the FMB is pushing the Department for Communities and Local Government to set up. I finished up by reminding everyone that for every £1 invested in construction, £2.48 was generated in the economy.
GET BRITAIN BUILDING
The Labour Party conference also provided a valuable opportunity to link up with the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) to lobby together as part of the ‘Get Britain Building’ campaign. Brett Amplett from the BMF and I had meetings with a wide range of Labour MPs including the Shadow Construction Minister, Ian Lucas MP, the former Construction Minister Nick Raynsford MP, Chris Williamson MP (Derby North), Meg Munn MP (Sheffield Heeley), Andy Love MP (Edmonton), Steve Rotherham MP (Liverpool Walton), John Spellar MP (Warley), and Huw Irranca-Davies MP (Ogmore). Other meetings we attended included Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council and Gail Cartmail, Assistant General Secretary of Unite.
Fortunately there was time also to eat as well as speak. The Fabian Society breakfast meeting with Emily Thornberry MP was another opportunity to discuss the issue of green jobs and the role that construction can and should be playing to help create more jobs in the economy. The Electrical Safety Council dinner, which I was invited to attend, debated the issue of fire safety and the need to reduce risk. I was sitting next to Michael McCann MP (East Kilbride, Strathhaven and Lesmahagow) who was very interested in the work of the FMB and our industry and I’ll be following this up with another meeting with him later this year.
THE FMB’S VOICE GETS LOUDER
Finally, the conferences provided an ideal opportunity to meet a range of FMB partners across the construction sector including the Home Builders Federation (HBF), the Construction Products Association (CPA), Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Federation of Small Businesses and Unite. Now we’re busy following up all the leads to make sure we keep the momentum going to ensure the FMB’s voice is heard within Parliament.
