Abatement and Set-Off

The financial difficulties created for a smaller contractor by the larger or more powerful main contractor or employer with whom he contracts have been the subject of much hand-wringing and not a little legislation since the days of Victorian ‘laissez-faire’ capitalism. The persistent refusal of the larger company to pay the invoices rendered by the smaller has always been one of many weapons wielded by the larger organization to ensure that its own cash flow was given priority over the interests and rights of others. The phenomenon referred to in the media in the early 1990s as ‘subbie-bashing’ is, sadly, nothing new: larger and more powerful main contractors have always done all that they can to make their own contracts as profitable as possible, and it has often been their sub-contractors and suppliers who have suffered. By the same token, as Lord Diplock points out in Gilbert-Ash, the main contractor is himself vulnerable to similar machinations on the part of the employer.