Much is being made of the the Private Finance Initiative
responsibility for bankrupting South London Healthcare, with 14% of
income having to fund two large PFI projects.
The BBC's line about PFI is:
"Private finance initiatives are partnerships between private
companies and public services
The private company stumps up the finance for the public service - in
this case, NHS hospitals
PFI offers a way of funding major capital investments, without
immediate recourse to the public purse
The NHS then repays the private company under a system of annual fees"
This is misleading in respect of most PFI deals and complete misleads
the public about the truley hroffic nature of John Prescott's
cherished idea. Most PFI deals were Design, Build, OWN and Maintain
schemes. PFI is neither a loan nor even a mortgage. At the end of the
25-30 year agreement whatever legacy Health organisation that has
taken on the PFI agreement merely has the first option to buy the
asset they have paid for, many times over. And they will have to buy
it at the full market price then.
Prescott, Milburn and Blair created an asset-less Health service and
a licence for the PFI building owners to print money at the expense of
the NHS.
Unless these myths about PFI being a public private "partnership" or
loan scheme are challenged the obvious solution - a substantial and
sustained windfall tax on the earnings from PFI deals - will not
happen. To descibe this as a partnership is absurd as it would be to
describe the relationsip between a loanshark and their victim as a
"partnership".
The same windfall tax solution also exists for the problem of what to
do with the massive surpluses that have been built up in some NHS
Foundation Trusts (interestingly another Milburn production) which are
out of the reach of the Department of Health and local commissioners,
and are being held as unspent reserves rather than being reinvested in
health services by their boards.
--
Mike Hughes
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