2 Comments »

1. According to the Liberal Democrats “the NHS is facing a £63bn bill for hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) which are only worth £11bn….with the NHS still owing some £58bn on 106 PFI contracts”

   Lib Dem shadow health secretary Norman Lamb is reported as saying: “…We’re entering into one of the most difficult financial periods in the NHS’s history and this government’s legacy will be a mountain of debt. Despite the enormous amounts of money we owe for these hospitals, many of them will never end up in public ownership. Hospitals all over the country are mortgaged to the hilt and there are serious concerns that these repayments will lead to cuts in vital services.”

   Although of course the £58bn owing includes maintenance and operational costs for the remainder of the next 30 or so years, there are few doubts that Hospital Trusts will need to make cuts to service their PFI commitments.

   However, a not inconsiderable sum of money could be saved by the NHS looking again at their PFI Contracts and seeing the extent to which they are paying for services they are not receiving. This is not a simple exercise, but experience suggests the costs that could be saved may be considerable, possibly running to hundreds of millions of pounds across the NHS estate.

   From my experience, the problem with PFI is that the public sector just has not been able to get to grips with challenge of effectively managing profit driven PFI companies. Such a problem is not unique to the NHS; it exists in just about every sector of PFI. If the public sector managers do not fully understand the contracts they have signed up to and if they do not sufficiently resource their contract teams to audit performance, then invariably service will suffer and money will be lost.

   Although the National Audit Office periodically appears alert to the problems in managing PFI Contracts, there has in my view been a systemic failure on the part of the Government to ensure that those burdened with managing PFI Contracts are given the support and expertise necessary to do the job effectively.

   Comment by Matthew Dillon — 19 Feb 2010 on 9:50 am | Link

2. This is a nice bit of info on my favorite subject:- P.F.I’s. It’s time all this got out in the open for the public to see. Ring fence the N.H.S. budget er? That’s cool, but that action also harbors and protects the blood sucking virus that is pfi.

   Comment by Neal Evans — 8 Jun 2010 on 8:09 pm | Link

---

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.