Bureaucracy, regulations and high taxes stifle the UK’s competitiveness and construction will feel the effects sooner or later, a bullish Conservative shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin warned an industry audience last month.

Within an hour of gaining office, he said, the Tories would freeze civil service recruitment and, within a week, dismantle initiatives burdening local authorities such as the Comprehensive Performance Assessment inspection regime, and Best Value Performance Indicators. In health he pledged to abolish strategic health authorities, primary care trusts “and about half the quangos”.

When a delegate pointed out that many construction companies are counting on the government’s public spending programme, Letwin was quick to reassure him, saying new schools and hospitals would still be needed: “You won’t be dealing with large bureaucracies anymore. You’ll be dealing with parents and trustees who have the money to spend if they are attracting the pupils and patients.”

Letwin peppered attendees at a Building magazine breakfast club in London with well-rehearsed anti-government ammunition. The statistics in his litany of Labour flab include:

  • 15 new business regulations created every working day since 1997;
  • The number of tax collectors has increased almost twice as fast as new doctors and nurses;
  • 88,000 new people were employed to work in education last year, but only 14,000 of those were teachers or teaching assistants;
  • The number of NHS managers is increasing three times as fast as that of new doctors.

Source

Construction Manager