Construction Sector Deal — House of Commons, 2018-07-05
Topic: Technology
Richard Harrington (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, this is a few weeks: we are talking about nine months, and nine times four is about 36 weeks, which is a few weeks compared with 5,000 weeks. But the hon. Gentleman makes a serious point, and we did want to get this right Sector deals are no longer just Government edicts. They are true partnerships with not just the usual suspects but lots of companies in industry, and we have done our best to get this right and make it as comprehensive as possible. I am sorry that the delay has put the hon. Gentleman out, but I believe we have got it right, and I welcome the more positive comments he made, among quite a lot of negative ones I would make the same point about the other sector deals the hon. Gentleman mentioned, such as that for rail. We are working on them: there is no go-slow; Ministers are not off playing golf. These are very important to me; this is a big chunk of my portfolio and I do hope that at least privately the hon. Gentleman will accept that I do my best with diligence to try to get to the bottom of these things. But they are very comprehensive: the documents may contain a few graphics and things in colour, but they are serious documents, and, more importantly, the deals behind them are very serious The hon. Gentleman rightly raises Carillion as that is an important matter. There are a lot of things to be learned for the future from what happened. The Government have worked very well with banks and other institutions. We have taken on board the wider lessons to do with the Insolvency Service and so forth, we have consulted a lot of people on Carillion, and we are on the way to showing companies like Carillion that directors cannot behave irresponsibly, because the consequences are very significant. They affect not only shareholders and banks; they can affect millions of people and small and large businesses alike The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Government’s attitude to research and development expenditure. I am proud of our aspiration of 2.9% of GDP for research and development. In dealing now with these bids for the industrial strategy challenge fund and so forth, we are seeing a very significant increase in Government expenditure on research and development. It is a very large part of BEIS’s budget The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Labour party’s view that everything should happen now or more quickly: well, it did not do so in all the years Labour was in power. I try not to make party political points if I can possibly avoid it, but I think history will show that our record in increasing research and development spending is very good, and in practice sector deals are the conduit through which it is used. Gone are the days when Government Departments and institutions like the National Economic Development Council, which I remember visiting as an A-level economics student at school, did this; gone are the days when civil servants and Ministers decided where this money was invested. There is now a thoughtful process, independently held, in our case through Sir Mark Walport, and I am very hopeful that in the future more money will be spent through this process The hon. Gentleman asked a reasonable question about how significant a part of the agenda skills were. For construction, skills are without doubt critical. Most people in construction currently talk about skills shortages, and the increased number of apprentices that is aspired to in this sector deal certainly cannot be taken lightly. I have seen the way young people are being trained up through apprenticeships, and there is also the retraining of older people, the T-levels and all the other related educational matters that I do not have time to go into today. They will all make a significant difference to skills It is true, too, that different skills will be needed in the future, as I saw from the type of skills being used during a recent visit I made to Skanska, in Rickmansworth near my constituency. Computers are now used not just to make the design we are so used to in building but in the detailed technicalities for each part of the project. I was shown an example in Paddington station where every material for every panel will be passed to owners of the future, because part of the sector deal is about the whole life of buildings, not just the original construction which was traditionally the most important aspect Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned workers’ conditions, and who is and who is not an employee and so forth. He will know about the Taylor review and that the Government are accepting almost every recommendation Taylor makes. That will make a significant difference to people’s lives.