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Let’s ditch the training levy
The ConstructionSkills levy is making enemies and
criminals out of contractors and not getting much training done
either. There must be a better way …
“If you don’t pay the levy, ConstructionSkills
sues. It matters not one jot that this year your firm is making
a loss – its hand still comes out for a whopping big cheque”
“Tear down the barriers to training.” So said
David Willetts, the shadow secretary of state for skills. If you
put that to the folk at ConstructionSkills, they would yell
hurrah! And if you put that to building contractors they would
shout hurrah! And if you put that to my cleaning lady, she would
say: “What barriers?” Well, I’ll tell you – it’s a piece of
awful law. It’s called the Industrial Training Act 1982 and it’s
time for it to go.
The awful thing is the piece of law in the
act that drags a mandatory annual tax from almost every
contractor. The dreaded “levy” … no, the despised and detested
levy that makes contractors turn against ConstructionSkills,
their main training body. The levy is a great big stick. It is
supposed to persuade contractors to take on apprentices so as to
get the tax paid back in labour. If it worked, you would not
have 50,000 youngsters seeking apprenticeships and companies
saying, “no, thanks” to 40,000 of them.
Come and stand with me in front of a room of
plastering, roofing or ceiling boys. Now watch their eyes when I
mention the levy. Then listen. A lot reject the law that makes
it a criminal offence, (yes, you could go to prison – it’s
called fraud) for filling in false information on the levy form.
This law is designed to catch firms that say their turnover is
lower than it is so they don’t have to pay. The levy, year in
year out, persuades folk to walk away from the training body.
And I bet if I spent a quiet hour over a
decent claret with my friends at ConstructionSkills, they would
admit that dragging a levy out of contractors damages their
relationship with them and that collecting it costs them
millions of pounds that ought to go into training.
So, you are a putter-upperer. Profits, if
any, are mighty thin. Then the law pokes its nose in to require
you to fill in a ConstructionSkills form. You have to count the
number of chippies you have, and brickies, and groundworkers,
and labourers … even the number of cleaning ladies. You also
have to tot up all the money paid to the self-employed folk.
Then you get an invoice for the levy.
And if you don’t pay, ConstructionSkills
sues. It matters not one jot that all you need this year is one
apprentice, nor that this year your firm is making a loss, nor
that ConstructionSkills has no training for your specialist
partitioners or concrete repair outfits: the levy is still
payable and ConstructionSkills’ hand comes out for a whopping
big cheque. So you have a piece of law that is the worst thing
for industrial relations you could have invented. Barrier? No,
mountain. So now please, dear parliament, please consider this
next bit.
Put the levy on the materials instead. Stop
counting every bricklayer in the land and put the levy on bricks
instead. Stop hunting down and counting every plasterer in the
land for a levy per head; put the levy on plaster instead. Stop
playing “find the roof tiler and all his mates”, then lumping a
tax on each of them; just put the levy on the tiles instead. Can
you work out how much money is spent each year counting heads
for the levy?
ConstructionSkills sends out its levy form
(five pages) to everyone in the land it thinks is in its scope.
Yes, all builders, civil engineers, demolition contractors,
dryliners, felt roofers, floorers, ashphalters, shopfitters,
even steeplejacks and oodles more besides. Refuse to join the
club or cheat on the data and you commit a crime. The levy
department is the hunter-gatherer. It has the best collection of
yellow pages in the land – to find you. It has levy inspectors
on the road – a fleet of ConstructionSkills bikers can be found
in your town and village.
Oh, come on. Let’s keep ConstructionSkills.
Simply move the training income to a different part of the
supply chain. Forget finding and counting and taxing every
bricklayer. Just put a tiny percentage on the prime cost of
bricks at source. It will be no skin off the nose of materials
suppliers to collect the levy via their invoice and pay it to
ConstructionSkills. All that is needed is, say, a 1% “training
levy” at source. Then anyone who buys building materials pays
levy when it buys them.
And (here is the trick) anyone who then
trains or re-trains a lad or lass gets money as a reward. Easy?
Well no, of course it’s not easy. The hard bit is getting that
very kind David Willetts and his fellow MPs to actually do it.
Come to think of it, parliament could do it by the end of next
week and have a queue of construction firms welcoming
ConstructionSkills and a string of apprentices at the door. We
might even organise training so that we can immediately start
training for the huge labour demands for the Olympics and to
take the place of our eastern European friends who are now all
on their way home.
Readers are invited to forward recent
judgments for reporting in this column (with full
acknowledgement) to: Tony Bingham, 3 Paper Buildings, Temple,
London EC4Y 7EU. DX: 37164 Biggleswade
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