Construction industry needs a watchdog to stand guard over the little builders

A new bill aims to ringfence payments to small contractors and stop the practice of ‘subbie-bashing’The concept of dominant forces in the construction industry snatching some readies off folk less powerful in the supply chain sounds a trifle Dickensian. Literally so, in that this is precisely what the odious Sam Pecksniff, the obsequious architect in Martin Chuzzlewit, did by trousering his students’ tuition fees and passing off their work as his own.But it is also quite obviou