The report was being launched at a conference for health campaigners in London on Saturday.

“When the NHS is making cuts and closures across the country, it’s time to ask if this is the best use of public money” said Alex Nunns of Keep Our NHS Public

It says: “Unlike the Thatcher privatisations of the 1980s, the whole NHS is not being put up for auction. Instead, it is being parcelled up into bite-sized pieces and handed over to private control bit by bit. This is happening on such a scale and at such pace as to make it a unique phenomenon.”

Alex Nunns, of Keep Our NHS Public, said: “Unbeknown to the public, the NHS is paying astronomical sums of money to the private sector. When the NHS is making cuts and closures across the country, it’s time to ask if this is the best use of public money.”

The sums
As recently as October, the government disclosed some of the figures involved in the NHS’s use of PFI schemes to finance new hospitals.

The figures, which emerged in a response to a Parliamentary Question tabled by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, showed that the NHS would pay a total of £53bn to the private firms involved.

That amount was the total cost, as opposed to the numbers in the report by Keep Our NHS Public, which relate to profits.

But the Tories claimed at the time that the new hospitals themselves were only worth £8bn, leaving “completely unjustifiable” extra costs of £45bn.

A spokesman from the Department of Health said in response to the new report that the annual payments made by NHS trusts to private sector partners covered financing charges, repayment of capital, building maintenance and, in most cases, all the non-clinical support services like cleaning and catering.

From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6279889.stm

The fleecing of the NHS by Labour’s extortionate PFI financing has been a founding worry of the Health Direct blog.

On Aug 16 06 in PFI profits exposed by Channel 4 as greater than credit card companies- Public Service, Private Profit, Liam Halligan revealed how the private funding of state schools and hospitals is draining hundreds of millions of pounds from frontline services, while creating a £4 billion-a-year industry and a new elite of publicly-unaccountable PFI professionals.

Under PFI, companies raise cash to fund public infrastructure projects, with the state signing long-term contracts. When it comes to ‘delivering’ schools and hospitals, Labour claims PFI is ‘the only game in town’. It certainly looks a win-win policy for Gordon Brown. He can claim to be ‘prudent’ – because most PFI borrowing is off the government’s books. And ministers can regularly be seen opening shiny new public buildings.

During a 6-month investigation, Halligan visited some of the UK’s 700 PFI projects. He secured exclusive testimony – with numerous public officials speaking out for the first time – about ‘hidden costs’ and ’sweated contracts’. And the film revealed Sir John Bourn, the Auditor General’s, concerns about PFI.

The programme Dispatches: Public Service, Private Profit revealed how the ownership of the HQ of a leading government department has been quietly transferred, by one of the UK’s biggest banks, to an overseas tax haven. It reveals how a little-known investment company based in Guernsey is now the biggest owner of UK schools and hospitals after the state – responsible for 100,000 pupils and 13,000 hospital beds.

The film also revealed how PFI locks us into 30-year contracts with companies then charging huge mark-ups for basic maintenance. Changing a light switch in one flagship PFI hospital costs hundreds of pounds. Halligan met an exasperated Head Teacher, constantly battling to get a PFI company to honour its contract. ‘PFI has made students depressed at times – when they’ve seen the lack of interest in the building and poor quality of work. Staff have resigned over it. PFI is threatening this school’.

Dispatches then unveiled a multi-billion pound market in which public sector projects are being traded as commodities in the City of London. This ’secondary market’ is generating huge profits. Since 1997, Labour has signed PFI deals worth £43 billion – leaving taxpayers with a £150 billion bill over 25 years. And, in his last budget, Brown announced another £26 billion of new PFI projects.

PFI, in turn, is a multi-billion pound industry. New Labour has signed hundreds of long-term contracts with the private sector to construct – and then service and maintain – schools, hospitals and other public buildings. The government pays back investors over 30 years or more, after which the buildings revert to the state.

Even two years ago, it was clear the government had based the biggest public building programme since the war on a gigantic – and controversial – hire-purchase scheme.

After all, as early as 1997, then Health Minister Alan Milburn proclaimed, ‘it’s PFI or bust’. In other words, if local health chiefs don’t agree to PFI, the hospital won’t be built. I remember quoting figures to a chap at my table: by the end of 2003, PFI had been used for 90 of the 100 hospitals built or refurbished under Labour.

Labour has signed PFI deals worth £43bn. The long-term taxpayer cost – £150bn. The cost of changing a light switch in a leading PFI hospital? A cool £333 and I’ve got the document which proves it.