In case you hadn’t heard, a general election will almost certainly be taking place later this year. With pollsters, pundits and the press predicting a Labour victory, the FMB chose to attend Scottish Labour’s business forum in Glasgow. At the same time, Scottish Labour’s main party conference took place next door in the SEC, whilst this one-day business forum gathered in the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
To support members, the FMB speaks out on your behalf to policy makers around the UK. One of our five key strategic objectives with our strategic plan: Building for Success is Voice. This is about ensuring our voice is effective and widespread within government, industry and the media. Our current politicians and political candidates need to understand more about the construction industry and the perspective of local building companies. This is the case across all four nations of the UK.
Business crowd by the Clyde
As you may expect, there was a healthy spread of industries represented in the room. Pharmaceuticals, financial services, energy giants, food, drink and hospitality being some of the ones I came across. On arrival I had a few words with Daniel Johnson MSP, who chaired most of the sessions. Another MSP who has engaged with the FMB, Dame Jackie Baillie spoke out at the first session of the day. Some frontbench Labour MPs appeared and spoke during the day too, with Ed Miliband and Jonathan Reynolds (Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade) being the highest profile.
Now every delegate (around 120 if my headcount was accurate) in the room was there to make points on behalf of their members and / or their specific industry. So what points did I make on behalf of FMB members?
There are a wide range of issues and policies impacting our members across Scotland alone, let alone across the UK. So I focused on the core points of
- promoting and funding vocational education to create a pipeline of construction talent;
- the central role FMB members play in recruiting and training construction craft apprentices;
- how local building companies will be needed to retrofit the UK’s 28 million homes and help governments around the UK meet their climate change targets;
- the crucial role of small-scale developers in building more homes and the obstacles they face; and
- why the next UK Government should introduce a licensing scheme for the building industry.
It’s not just a cost-of-living crisis
Of course it is a case of myself and my colleagues following up on these and other lobbying matters. In Scotland the next elections aren’t until 2026, but as I write we are finalising the FMB’s manifesto for the general election. One MSP I will be following up with is Mark Griffin who as an attentive listener to my point about planning and housing.
Overall I felt the hosts certainly were keen to listen to ‘business’. There was plenty of talk of how and why economic growth is essential: especially as the UK has just entered a technical recession. One phrase which came up was the ‘cost of running a business crisis.’ We know from our member’s feedback just what this means for local building companies. Just what any incoming government can and will do to help assuage this is another matter.
Authors
Gordon Nelson
Director, Federation of Master Builders Scotland
