Construction Industry

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, this welcome debate, secured by my noble friend Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, is about the future of the UK construction industry to the economy. I am an honorary fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and director of a small—perhaps not micro—consultancy. I have been engaged in research on building construction since the 1960s, when civil engineers realised, following the famous collapse of three cooling towers during a tea break on a construction site in Yorkshire, that new designs were needed. I remember clambering along the edges of a tall skyscraper to study the wobbling of the tubes, because a few months later the Queen was going to open that building.

In fact, UK technology has played a leading role in the construction of many advanced buildings around the world. I would mention some of the bridges in Hong Kong and, whatever one might think of the aesthetics, the skyscrapers of London. These construction projects have certainly contributed to the economy and have created jobs in the capital. Basic research in the UK has made a contribution, a notable example of which was the invention in the 1960s of the float glass process by Pilkington. That glass is now used in every tall building around the world. Much work has also been done to solve problems with turbulence through the creation of complex flow structures to combat wobbling in the wind or being buffeted in the wake created by wind turbines.

Other countries in Europe have also advanced their building technologies and practices, especially in the areas of thermal comfort, noise and damp, all of which have been mentioned in the debate and which I saw when I visited a German public housing project. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, made the comment that local authorities may not be the best landlords, but the Germans were using the housing association model long before it became prevalent here.

An important role for the construction industry is ensuring adequate flood defences in our cities, but much more funding needs to be provided in this area in order to achieve higher standards. Our Dutch colleagues were not impressed by what they saw in the UK this winter. I hope that the Minister can tell us how EU programmes can benefit UK construction and whether they will be expanded under the next EU programme for research and development, known as Horizon 2020. Some UK building companies have made good use of the open and more or less freely available information produced by the German Fraunhofer Institutes. Such information is no longer available from the Building Research Establishment, which in the view of many UK practitioners has become excessively privatised. Indeed, the micro element of construction which has been a feature of many contributions requires free or cheap advice to enable people to use the technologies. A notable piece in this morning’s newspapers is the fact that Homebase is to close many of its stores because fewer and fewer people either know about or can apply these skills.

The purpose of this debate is to look forward. I welcome the Government’s policy document, Construction 2025: Strategy. It points out that there has been a great increase in research and development over the past 10 years, with a deeper commitment on the part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to the needs of the construction industry, which is very welcome. But the report also emphasises the need to improve the effectiveness of putting UK research into practice. This requires working with big business and of course it is difficult, given that traditionally this is a rather fragmented industry. The chief scientific adviser in BIS, Professor Brian Collins, has commented on the importance of design and systems engineering. However, a contribution from the continent has come in the form of greater use of more advanced building materials, although the UK is also now moving in this direction.

Some of these new technologies are proving very important in the design and construction of green buildings and green cities, a point which has been made by a number of other speakers. One of the nicest examples of a green environment was the building of the Olympic site. Before work began there was a process of detailed planning of exactly how the green areas, water areas and building areas would look and how they would develop over time. It is interesting to note that how a locality is designed will affect the local temperature and humidity, as well as other aspects of comfort. The UK has made considerable advances in these areas. I should say that other cities around the world have encountered big problems in this regard. Heat waves in New York and Paris have led to high mortality rates in some of the less green areas of those cities. The development of cities is important in terms of maintaining health, and it is something that the chief scientific adviser will be aware of. We can expect to see more of these difficulties in the future as we experience longer periods of extreme weather. That will present a great challenge to the construction industry.

One way in which I hope we are contributing towards a reduction in the rate of climate change over the long term is by having a vigorous nuclear power station programme. The Government are to be congratulated on moving forward in this direction. Noble Lords have pointed out that the programme will be a big boost to the construction industry. Other planners and representatives of the construction industry who are considering the future of cities must realise that probably the most environmentally successful cities will not be megacities; rather, they will be cities that have been broken up so that they can incorporate large green areas. The Germans more or less invented this concept and we should look to the continent to see how we can develop it.