RICS reaction to ministerial appointments

It’s been one week since the General Election, and it’s often said that a week is a long time in politics. 

That is certainly the case with this one, as not many people envisaged a Conservative majority Government would be returned. 

Since then, the Prime Minister has finalised his Cabinet positions but what does this mean for the construction industry?

Notable appointments that will be important in the industry include George Osborne returning as Chancellor, Sajid Javid becoming Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Liz Truss continuing as Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Anna Soubry becoming Minister of State (Minister for Small Business), and Brandon Lewis remaining as Minister of State for Housing and Planning.

UK Construction Media spoke to Jeremy Blackburn, Head of Policy & Parliamentary Affairs at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), who offered his thoughts on his hopes and expectations for the construction industry.

Obviously, personalities are important but I think the continuity overall in terms of policy is quite important. So for instance, commitment to Construction 2025 and to continue with that is one of the most important things for the construction sector from our point of view. 

In fact, it probably needs a quick sense-check, a re-affirmation and driving forwards on its targets and therefore that’s where Savid Javid will be quite important.

Having Anna Soubry as the Small Business Minister will also be very valuable, and with an eye on SMEs particularly in construction. Previously, the Minister of State in business has always been the one more or less directly responsible for construction and in the last Government, Mark Prisk stands out because of his level of knowledge and understanding of the sector. And that appointment, if it has responsibility for construction, will be quite important. 

Liz Truss’ appointment is interesting because not many people pick up the impact Defra might have on development. What was started by the last Government from that Natural Environment White Paper was a whole heap of work on valuation of ecosystem services and biodiversity offsetting. Again, it’s that continuity point. Are they going to carry on with that and get it into place?

With Liz in the widest possible sense for RICS, that’s where we’re interested in things like rural broadband and rural economy and how properties drive rural economy. Or be it if we say there’s a housing crisis, then it’s gone beyond national emergency in some rural areas in terms of affordable housing, so it’s really about trying to put the pressure on Defra to say you need to get back out across the other departments to make sure they are delivering for the percentage of England that isn’t urban and hopefully the time she had before the General Election in the department will stand her in good stead.

I suppose for the construction sector, thinking about the role of public sector within construction, there’s the wider point relating to Treasury in terms of public spending. We’ve got further commitment to more austerity in this Parliament now. Equally, the Conservatives have promised to put in law freezing certain key taxes. So where are you going to make your savings is the big question and it can only be really answered by Osborne’s first budget. 

That could have quite an effect if it continues to drive down public spend on construction and probably more importantly, on infrastructure, where we saw Coalition ministers saying we cut too fast, too quick. 

They need to keep a pretty steady state in terms of infrastructure spending because that gives confidence to the market and certainty, and we need to gear more private money based on that to come in and fund what we need to build on infrastructure. 

I think housebuilding is going to be the real canary in the coal mine because it’s naturally a Government or a party that doesn’t really like strategy and actually the house building problem we’ve got needs a coordinated, coherent housing strategy, and that’s obviously where the workload is going to come for the construction sector as well.

At the moment, there are a number of good-announced ambitions and a number of policy mechanisms already there that they’re pushing but what we’ve been saying is: “What you’ve announced in the campaign, and a lot of what exists is very much demand side. What are we going to do to have a supply-side solution to this and really drive spades into the ground and get building?” 

All I can say is, particularly with Brandon Lewis, because we were certainly keen to see him returned if there was a Conservative Government, that’s good because that’s continuity. I think the continuity point is something that’s very important when David Cameron thinks: ‘I want my Ministers to know their briefs, to get under the skin of it and really understand it. And not be moving every year or two years’.

I think that’s a really good thing and is almost quite refreshing after the Labour years where everybody was moving around a lot of the time and needed re-briefing, and equally wanted their own initiatives. 

Whilst this Government might have all the right indicators for business, we would say: “That’s fine but are we going to get that housing strategy?” We’re not going to get an infrastructure committee now. 

All of these things which actually, even our members – albeit many of them are private sector and more amenable to Conservative policies – would say we need these things in place.

The Government needs to be more activist or interventionist on key things. 

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