{"id":329,"date":"2020-04-14T12:09:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/?p=329"},"modified":"2020-04-15T15:03:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T14:03:27","slug":"the-pfi-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/?p=329","title":{"rendered":"The PFI Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cAll trust debts should be wiped clean by the Treasury, and contracts renegotiated and brought back into public ownership on grounds of poor value. The premise of PFI that the private sector is more efficient in delivering and managing infrastructure projects has repeatedly been shown to be false,\u201d<\/em>
\nDr John Puntis<\/strong>, retired paediatrician, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public<\/p>\n

The Barts Trust is deeply in debt and sinking deeper, with projected deficits for 2014-15 rocketing upwards from \u00a343m at the end of December to \u00a393m, according to its February board papers \u2013 or even as much as \u00a3100 million, according to the Health Service Journal<\/p>\n

The financial problem has been a ticking time-bomb beneath the surface ever since the then Bart\u2019s and the London Hospital Trust was given the go-ahead in 2006 to sign up for the costly \u00a31.1 billion scheme to redevelop both Bart\u2019s and the Royal London, financed under the ruinously expensive Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Believe it or not, the \u00a31.1 billion scheme was in fact a scaled down version of the original plan, which had mushroomed in size to a staggering \u00a31.9 billion.<\/p>\n

Like other, smaller PFI schemes, the actual cost to the Trust would not be \u00a31.1 billion, but much more, with a legally-binding contract stipulating inflation-linked instalments, rising every year, for the next 35 years. The \u201cunitary charge\u201d payments for both the building and for non-clinical support services started high at \u00a3109m per year \u2013 and keep on rising, regardless of how much revenue is flowing into the Trust<\/p>\n

2015 Treasury figures show that the PFI development eventually cost \u00a31.15 billion: so far \u00a3675m has been paid back, but another 33 years of payments to come will cost at the very least \u00a36.5 billion more to 2048.
\nGuardian Report 12 September 2019 “Some trusts are having to spend as much as one-sixth of their entire budget on repaying debts due as a result of the PFI scheme. PFI was introduced by John Major\u2019s Conservative government but its use proliferated in the Blair era .<\/em>”<\/p>\n

The PFI contract for Barts Health trust in London, involving an outlay of almost \u00a31.2bn, is the largest by value in the English NHS. It paid for the building of the Royal London hospital, which opened in 2012 and has 845 beds spread across 110 wards.<\/p>\n

However, the entire project will have cost the trust \u00a36.2bn by the time it ends, according to Treasury estimates. Barts spends \u00a3116m a year servicing its debt, which is 7.66% of its income, according to the IPPR report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis timely and shocking IPPR report highlights the huge waste of taxpayers\u2019 money from paying off PFI debts that are crippling the NHS and could be much better spent on patient care,<\/em>\u201d said Dr John Puntis<\/p>\n

\n

Richard Branson who has a \u00a34.2 billion fortune, and paid the exchequer no personal income tax since moving to the tax-free British Virgin Islands 14 years ago; and was awarded \u00a32billion worth of NHS and local authority healthcare deals, is now asking for a government bailout
\nEarlier this year healthcare campaigner Dr John Lister accused Branson\u2019s Virgin healthcare group of playing a \u2018parasitic role in the NHS, fragmenting services and poaching NHS-trained staff and undermining nearby health trusts<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sign the Petition, Register for the Zoom meeting…<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c Austerity took a terrible toll on the NHS which lost 44% of its general and acute care beds between 1987-88 and 2018-19. A health researcher commented to the Financial Times that the expansion of the private hospital market over 20 years had provided \u201c an excuse for the government not to invest enough in healthcare capacity…..the deal with NHS England was effectively a \u2018bailout\u2019 for the UK\u2019s private hospital sector and their landlords, which include listed real estate investment trusts.\u201dThe price is now being paid in Britain with the terrible overcrowding in hospital wards, putting NHS workers and ill patients at risk, including the threat of death. This is where ruthless capitalist privatisation leads .\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAll trust debts should be wiped clean by the Treasury, and contracts renegotiated and brought back into public ownership on grounds of poor value. The premise of PFI that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaigns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/waltham-forest-trades-council\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}