The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill yesterday attracted further controversy before the part concerning construction contracts has even been debated during the critical House of Lords committee stage.
Last week Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, who is president of subcontractors' group SECG, withdrew some of his proposed amendments to the Bill. Click here for our Law-Now summarising his proposals.
He abandoned proposals 1-4 as set out in that Law-Now apparently because he considered it “inappropriate in the current climate to pursue them” after corruption allegations surfaced against four peers. The proposals he abandoned were supposedly those that favoured subcontractors although a question mark remained over whether his surviving proposals tended to have the same effect.
Now Lord O'Neill has withdrawn the balance of his proposals (summarised at paragraphs 5-7 of our previous Law-Now). This is despite him having properly declared his SECG role.
It is also despite the Bill's intended changes to the Construction Act already raising polarised views across the industry. In particular, some doubt the merits of the Bill's overhaul of the Act's payment regime - at an uncertain cost to the industry in changing payment practices and the provisions of all UK standard form contracts. These concerns (which were less marked when the review of the Construction Act started in 2004) may only heighten as the impact of the recession on the industry unfortunately deepens.
It remains to be seen whether another peer will be prepared to take up any of Lord O'Neill's proposed amendments. Lord Ullswater (who was involved with the formulation of the original Construction Act) voiced support for some of Lord O'Neill's proposals in an earlier debate (click here for our relevant Law-Now).
We will report again on the Bill's progress through the House of Lords' committee stage.
