My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Aberdare. The matter of retentions comes right at the end of this series of Grand Committee sessions, but it is part of a culture. It is the race to the bottom, value engineering or cost-cutting. Construction contract architecture and the practices that have grown up with it are all part of the perverse incentives that have somehow been built up.
At one stage in my professional life, retentions of, say, 5% or 2.5% for limited periods, as the case may be, started as security for the proper completion of works as set out and to a required standard. However, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that this has now gained the appearance of an informal and unconsented bankrolling of construction costs at the expense mainly of subcontractors and their suppliers. This has to stop. It is like all such situations: retentions have a legitimate use but have been subject to serial abuse. If we could keep our eye on one and render the other improbable, that would be all very well, but if the bad practitioners do not get the message, some brutal measures may indeed be necessary and better regulation and protection of sums due may follow from that. I cannot help thinking that the small and medium-sized enterprises that have dwindled and atrophied as a component part of the construction industry are the chief sufferers. They are unable to take on the big beasts of construction.
There is a real point behind this. If the memorandum that the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, referred to became a universal code of practice in the sense that you really had to justify yourself before stepping out of line, that would at least be a start. There is a lot we can do with
what we know and the existing situation in terms of decent treatment, honest measures and taking care of the whole supply line we are dealing with. What the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said about investment, training and that sort of thing is absolutely on point, and I certainly support the thrust of this amendment.