UK contractors ‘ignoring abuses’

Some of the largest UK contractors and construction consultants have won contracts in the Gulf state on multibillion-pound projects but Stephen Lines, regional president of the Chartered Institute of Building, said some were ignoring the plight of migrant workers.

“When you are an expat you get too relaxed and it gets too easy and there are too many here that turn their back on this worker welfare issue,” he said. “I have asked people who come from very good backgrounds and they have never even been to a labour camp. They are thinking, ‘Am I going to get a Porsche or a Bentley?’ There are UK companies working here who have labour working for them in conditions just as bad as Qatari companies. They know who they are.”

Lines works for Qatar Rail, which is spending £20bn on a new rail network. He declined to name any firms he believed to be at fault.

Projects in Qatar offer lower profit margins than in the UK but their scale have attracted some of Britain’s largest building firms. Carillion, Laing O’Rourke and Balfour Beatty are among the contractors operating in Qatar while consultants include the architects Lord Foster and Zaha Hadid and construction management firms Atkins, EC Harris and Turner & Townsend. There is no suggestion they are among the firms Lines believes are at fault.

He said some companies were now “looking more into the workers’ problems” but urged more to “take responsibility”. British main contractors in Qatar do not directly employ site labour, rather it is done through subcontractors and Qatari partners, said Lines, who is based in Doha.

“British contractors can easily say they look after their staff, but what about the people working on site?”