§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Howie.]
§ 3.57 a.m.
§ Mr. Terence Boston (Faversham)Midsummer may seem to be a strange time to raise the subject of bad weather building but it is quite useless to wait until the winter is upon us before we make preparations. In any case, it seems that bad weather is not confined to winter months. The failure to gear ourselves to bad weather working causes great losses to the nation as a whole and to thousands of individuals. It is clear from the excellent leaflet produced by the Ministry of Public Building and Works, "Winter Building Costs", that output falls by something like 10 per cent, during the winter. This also means that somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 men are laid off during the period. Some people put the figure higher—at 60,000 or 70,000 men. It also involves a considerable loss in wages, and in a normal winter this is put between £6 million and £11 million. In a bad winter like that of 1962–63 160,000 men were laid off. Another measure of the loss to the nation is that in 1962–63 it is reckoned that about £12 million was paid out in unemployment and National Assistance benefits.
Bad weather causes loss and hardship to workers in the industry and their families, a loss of profits for building firms and inconvenience and even hardship to people waiting for their homes to be built. It is of vital importance to maintain output if we are to reach the high targets for house building.
This subject is of great concern in my area which is a brick manufacturing area 538 and it would be far better for it if there were a steady demand throughout the year. We tend in this country to accept disruption caused by the weather instead of countering it. In other countries building work hardly stops during the winter months—in Sweden, for example, Canada and other countries, like Russia. Our building industry is a vital frontline one doing first-class essential work, but part of the blame must attach to the industry itself for failing to adapt to new methods and techniques. It needs to be much more modernisation-minded. Vast chunks of it are rather too backward or, to put it kindly, too modest about its capabilities.
That was startlingly revealed in the building industry's attitude to research into new methods as shown in the Answer by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to a Question I put to him yesterday which showed that in 1964 whereas all industries spent an average of about 2.7 per cent, of total investment on research, the building industry spent only.3 per cent, of its total investment or gross output on research. That is a very small figure indeed.
I know that much has been done both by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary and by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works, and by his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), to get the industry to adopt bad weather building methods. Various excellent publications have been produced by my hon. Friend's Ministry, including a booklet called "Winter Building", which was issued in 1962–63 and was produced by the previous Government. It took the worst winter for a good many years to produce that booklet and to produce a committee on winter building.
One point in passing about that booklet is that it contains a reference in its early pages to the fact that not all the material produced by the committee could be referred to and that this was to be evaluated and processed. I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary plans to bring out a more up-to-date version of the booklet, because it is very useful, and whether he can say something about what has been done subsequently to assess the difficulties and to evaluate this material.
539 Perhaps I may raise a number of specific questions and put one or two suggestions to my hon. Friend. One serious problem which faces the building industry is the loss of men each year, and also the fact that it is quite difficult to recruit new men to the industry. If we are to get more recruits to the building industry, one of the essential needs is to improve conditions on the site. One of the main things in this respect is to improve protective clothing and to get it rather more extensively used. I have seen some fairly ghastly and cumbersome types of protective clothing. We are not asking for the new, young apprentice entrants anything like Carnaby Street, still less Savile Row, but in a good many cases firms could use rather more improved clothing which is more comfortable to wear and in which it is easier to move about. I am wondering what has been done in this direction. We could also do a great deal to improve site conditions by getting firms to install showers, changing rooms, and so on. This would be one positive way to help to improve the status of the building worker.
A number of essential things, perhaps of a more concrete nature, also need to be done. I know that here again my hon. Friend and his Ministry have been working hard at this for a number of years, but one specific point which I would like to mention particularly is lighting on the site. Even if the weather in Britain is somewhat unpredictable, I should have thought that darker evenings are pretty regular in autumn and winter, and one should be able to predict and calculate at least for those. Can my hon. Friend say something about the effect that bad light or lack of lighting equipment has on output? What exactly has his Ministry been doing to encourage the use of lighting equipment more extensively? What is the extent to which lighting is being used on sites throughout the country? At the moment, one sees a great many sites that ought to be using floodlights and are not. Perhaps, too, my hon. Friend can say something about the cost, because one of the complaints which have been made recently is that the cost of such equipment is too high.
540 That brings me to the economics of winter building and the way that expenditure on equipment and materials affects the builder himself. Many of the big firms throughout the country have been using the new techniques for some time. If the Parliamentary Secretary has time to mention some of the actual technical developments, perhaps he could refer specifically to whether he is satisfied that, for example, new ways of concreting in frosty conditions are being used sufficiently.
It is often said that equipment for lighting on the site, improvements on the site, and so on, are beyond the reach of the small man. I should have thought that the small man can hardly afford not to use these new methods, and that he would be in danger of being squeezed out altogether if he did not get himself up to date. I wonder whether it is possible to encourage small builders to group themselves together in order to invest in equipment like floodlighting and other plant, and even in mobile canteens and other facilities, in co-operatives rather in the way that farmers do with equipment like combine harvesters?
I want now to refer to contracts. There is no doubt that some builders use bad weather clauses in contracts as an excuse to avoid keeping to completion dates. Although something has been done to tighten these up, I wonder whether my hon. Friend has carried out any further work in examining contracts, and whether there is further scope for tightening them up, more especially local authority contracts.
What is being done to see that the local authorities themselves are fully alive to the methods that can be used to further building in bad weather? Are the local authorities being called together to discuss the subject? Are any exhibitions being arranged for them? I should have thought that travelling exhibitions or demonstrations might be used.
Another factor which could help considerably is an extension of publicity. Apart from the booklet to which I have already referred and a number of very useful leaflets which have been produced, there is also an excellent film about winter building which has been produced by the Ministry. I wonder what other positive steps it is using to make publicity rather wider and not just passive.
541 For instance, has television been considered as a possibility?
I want to say a brief word about financial incentives. It has been pointed out that, in a number of countries, financial incentives have been used to encourage builders to adopt winter building methods. This has been tried in Sweden and Canada. In view of one of our debates earlier this morning, this may be an appropriate time of the year to discuss these matters.
I wonder why financial incentives have not been tried here. Various suggestions have been made, such as a subsidy for the use of labour in winter, and tax incentives for materials used particularly in bad weather building. Perhaps my hon. Friend might make a passing reference to those.
One final point to which I should like to refer is the question of opening the eyes of the public to what needs to be done. As members of the public, we are all to blame because of our attitude. As customers, we tend to be reluctant about commissioning such work as painting, decorating and plastering during the winter because we feel that the work cannot be done in bad weather and is bound to come to grief, whereas it can in fact be done with new methods and new materials. I wonder whether the Ministry has any ideas about getting the customer used to this and allaying his former fears?
Returning to painters and decorators for a moment, it is a fact, I believe, that unemployment affects that particular group of the industry more than any other group working in it.
These are some of the points which I should like to put to the Parliamentary Secretary, and I would hope that he will be able to say something about what the Ministry has been doing.
For some 18 months from October, 1964, I had the pleasure of sitting silently behind my hon. Friend in building debates in the seat now occupied by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Marquand), the Parliamentary Private Secretary, and although I am rather further behind my hon. Friend tonight I can assure him I shall be right behind him in any efforts his Ministry makes.
§ 4.11 a.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden)Contrary to appearances, this is a timely debate. Bad weather is certain in a British winter, and the summer is the time when builders should plan their winter precautions and order their equipment to cope with frost, rain and darkness. My hon. Friend has shown considerable knowledge of the difficulties caused to the construction industry by bad weather, and I am grateful to him for raising this matter even at this late hour.
I think that one of the essentials, as he suggested, is a much greater consciousness on the part of the public and the builders of the need to take precautions. As my hon. Friend said, there is a great deal of published material about this. The Ministry issues leaflets on concreting in cold weather, bricklaying in cold weather, weather and the builder, etc., and the industry itself has shown considerable responsibility in issuing material about it—the London Master Builders' Association has issued a comprehensive document on standard practice in winter working, and a catalogue of winter building equipment. So altogether there is a good deal of material about, and the task in front of us is to get that material into the hands of every builder.
As my hon. Friend has said, not only is it necessary for the builders to have full information about what they can do in bad weather, and particularly winter weather—it is necessary for the clients and the professions to have the same so that they can, through their contract arrangements, encourage continuity of working through bad weather and the winter.
The Ministry has issued instructions to all its professional officers in charge of contracts to try to ensure that precautions are taken and that work carries on in inclement weather unless it is so severe as to make this unreasonable.
This has been taken up in Circular 43/65 by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government which recommends similar action by local authorities, and in the same way the Department of Education and Science, the Ministry of Health and the Scottish Development Department have all taken the matter 543 very seriously and pressed on the bodies with whom they work the need for good contract arrangements to cover work throughout bad weather and the winter. On painting work, the Ministry does, as far as it possibly can, engage painters to do indoor painting work in the winter season, and it encourages other bodies to do the same.
My hon. Friend referred to films. The Department has produced an excellent film, which I think he has seen. This drives home the moral of working through bad weather very well, and I am pleased to say that the B.B.C. has produced a television film which was shown called "Carry on Building". This was shown on B.B.C 2 last summer, and it is to be rescreened on B.B.C. 1 at 9.45 p.m. on 27th, 28th and 30th June. I hope that hon. Members as well as a large number of people connected with the building industry will take the opportunity of seeing this film. We are most grateful for the collaboration which there was between the Ministry's winter building adviser and the B.B.C. in preparing this film. It is a little unfortunate that it has to be screened in the summer. Although summer is a good time for considering this subject, it is not perhaps a good time for televising this kind of material. Anyway, the B.B.C. has been most co-operative, and for this we are most grateful.
As my hon. Friend knows, the Ministry all the time, but particularly in the winter season, goes in for a big programme of conferences, lectures, and film shows. Last winter I attended a conference in Glasgow. It was exceptionally well organised, and people came from all over Scotland to discuss winter and bad weather building. The whole thing was most effective.
My hon. Friend raised a point about tax incentives. He will be interested to know that in May last O.E.C.D. had a working party on the best way of continuing work in bad weather and through the winter. The consensus was that tax incentives are open to abuse, and that the British method of nagging, worrying, using propaganda and pushing, as my hon. Friend has been doing tonight, is as effective as, and considerably cheaper than, using tax incentives. On this score I think we can sum it up by saying that 544 we should try all the methods that we know before we think of piling further burdens on the taxpayer. But I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his suggestion.
On the question of publicity, my hon. Friend raised a point about the pamphlets which have been issued from time to time. We have issued a questionnaire on the effect of winter lighting. Results are not yet available, but a good deal of information has come in, and I shall consider the point raised by my hon. Friend. We have also a vast amount of other information, which we need to publicise more widely, on all sorts of matters like air houses, coverings for buildings in course of erection, protective clothing, heating, and chemical additives to cement, and I shall continue to look carefully at the kind of publications that we need.
My hon. Friend said that he could not understand how any builder could afford not to take these precautions. I have said several times that winter building pays. I wish that every builder would grasp that. The Ministry issues a pamphlet which sets out the economics of winter building. We have a rough, rule of thumb guide which puts it this way, that in a normal winter a contractor can spend up to 10 per cent, of his fixed weekly overheads and profits for use during the winter period and recover that expenditure by keeping up his output. From a national point of view this is even more important, because of the general effect which working through the winter will have on the men, on the image of the builder, and so on.
I take the point made by my hon. Friend about small builders grouping to hire and share equipment, or perhaps even to buy it. I also take the point, which I am pursuing, of the best way of encouraging mobile welfare facilities.
One of the cheapest things which can be done, and something which is certain to be required in a winter, is to provide site lighting. I have said that winter building pays, and I have suggested a rule of thumb by which a builder can calculate what it will cost him to take precautions. There is no doubt that darkness comes in winter. There may be an argument that it might not snow in a good winter, and therefore that a builder need not bother, but darkness certainly comes, and it is disappointing 545 that almost every site is not lit through the winter. But the figures show a steady improvement. In 1963–64, it was estimated that site lighting was used on little more than 10 per cent, of the sites. As a result of publicity and general propaganda about lighting, this figure had risen by 1964–65 to 30 per cent. The questionnaire is being analysed and I hope shortly to be able to give an indication of progress. We are making progress, but not enough to satisfy me.
The Government are working with the British Electrical Development Association working party to seek a solution to one of the difficulties, that of getting electricity on to a site early. This is important not only for site lighting but also for electrical apparatus and heating equipment. This is being carefully and sympathetically considered by the electricity authorities. The British Lighting Council is taking an active rôle in encouraging contractors to take an interest in this work.
Perhaps the biggest factor is that the building industry has not perhaps as good an image as it deserves. It is a progressive industry and many firms have a great interest in their workmen and in the conditions they have to put up with. It has been put to me that workmen will understand if, because of difficulties, the management cannot provide them with everything they want, but that if the management does not show an interest, it has a bad effect. Bad weather building is one of those spheres in which precautions taken by management are bound to be reflected in better morale and efficiency among the men. From the national point of view, of course, stability of employment, good conditions on the site and a better image are all absolutely imperative.
Although long hours and a big pay packet look all right during the summer and shorter hours in the winter are therefore no great hardship, many men, and certainly their wives, would prefer to have a steady income maintained throughout the year. There is no question that good site facilities can greatly improve productivity and the spirit of men working on the site.
My hon. Friend raised the matters of protective clothing. The Ministry has prepared designs for better protective clothing to be tried out by our own 546 direct labour force and by selected contractors in the industry. It is hoped that in that way we shall evolve the best kind of clothing, though perhaps not along the lines which my hon. Friend suggested might be desirable for young apprentices.
In the meantime, there is, of course, a good deal of protective clothing about. With very little effort, the employer can find clothing which can greatly help to make men comfortable during cold and wet weather. The question of clothing is brought out very well in the winter building film to which I have referred.
Only today, the Minister held a conference with all those people who have been concerned with setting up a new organisation for research and information in the construction industry. The discussions went very well. Many sections of the industry are showing a keen interest in raising the necessary money. Something which will be an important part of both research and information aspects is the question of continuous working during bad weather and the winter.
I am hopeful that the steps that the Ministry is taking will be taken up by this new body and that it will be a permanent feature of our information service and our attitude to the industry that builders and workmen will reckon to work a normal week except perhaps during cataclysmic weather. The need for research into the various things which we require is fairly well known and research will go on. As more application is added to research, so we shall make headway.
My hon. Friend is perfectly right that the construction industry, as a whole, spends less on research than many manufacturing industries. We hope that this new organisation will give just the impetus needed, and not only that this national organisation will do work, but that many firms will continue with their own work and make great advances.
The essence is that what is known about bad weather building should be known on a much wider front and that everybody concerned with the construction industry, builders, men, clients and professionals, should take every step to see that work is pushed on through the winter. This will be in the national interest, and to the advantage of builder 547 and client. It is to everybody's advantage and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter because I am sure that notice will be taken of what he said.
§ 4.26 a.m.
§ Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)I do not want to disturb the mutual admiration society between the ex-P.P.S. and the Parliamentary Secretary, but this is a subject in which Her Majesty's Opposition have a continuing interest. I am glad that our booklet was referred to. The Parliamentary Secretary has said much about studies and propaganda and I hope we shall see some re- 548 sults now. He mentioned continuity and bricks. There was a surplus of between 500 million and 600 million in 1962–63. Now there is a surplus of 896 million. Heaven help us if there is a bad winter next year. I wish the Government well in their efforts to see better progress in winter building. We must have continuity and confidence in the industry and in the manufacture of building materials. Perhaps we can work together on that and get the brick stocks shifted.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Four o'clock a.m.