William Morris called the death of David Gray “gross negligence and manslaughter” and issued 11 recommendations to the Department of Health for the improvement of out-of-hours GP services.

As well as the review of how EU agreements work in the UK, he said the government must issue guidance to all NHS trusts over checking doctors’ English, their experience of the NHS and how they had acquired GP status.

Daniel Ubani, a Nigerian-born German citizen, was on his first UK shift as a locum when he killed Gray, whom he injected with 100mg of diamorphine – 10 times the recommended maximum dose.

Gray had been suffering from renal colic when he was treated by Ubani at his home in Manea, Cambridgeshire, on 16 February 2008.

After Gray’s death, a national database of all doctors working as out-of-hours GPs will be set up in an attempt to avoid doctors such as Ubani working in Britain.

The database was recommended by Gray’s family today, and Mike O’Brien, the health services minister, agreed to implement their suggestion.

He said better sharing of information by primary care trusts (PCTs) would help ensure that only competent and properly-qualified doctors were able to treat patients.

The recommendations are designed to ensure that doctors who have been refused permission to work on call at evenings and weekends in one part of England cannot then start treating patients in another.

They are intended to close the loophole that allowed Ubani to be refused permission to work initially in Leeds but then be approved to supply out-of-hours cover in Cornwall, where entry standards were less stringent, and because of that be employed in Cambridgeshire.

At the end of the inquest into Gray’s death, Morris demanded “robust” clinical and management measures, including training and induction for non-UK doctors.

He said only the company actually running an out-of-hours GP service should recruit doctors in future – a blow to private recruitment companies.

Evidence to the inquest, held in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, suggested Ubani had also inappropriately treated at least two, and possibly three, other patients.

Morris said: “It is clear to me that Dr Ubani, in his dealings with patients that fateful weekend, was incompetent, not of an acceptable standard.”

He ruled that 86-year-old Iris Edwards, who also died on Ubani’s first shift, had died of natural causes.

Graeme Kelvin, the chairman of Take Care Now (TCN), the private contractor that operated the out-of-hours service that treated Gray, offered his sympathies to the family over the “tragic event”.

He said he hoped the recommendations of the coroner would “reduce the chances of a similar event happening anywhere in England”.

Paul Zollinger-Read, the chief executive of NHS Cambridgeshire, accepted a systems failure had taken place, and said: “We as an organisation have much to learn from this case.”

One of Gray’s sons, Stuart, said: “I could not have hoped for anything better [than the verdict]. I hope Andy Burnham, the health secretary, acts on this.”

Rory, another of his sons, said: “This vindicates all the hard work we have put in.”

Ubani did not want to comment on the verdict, a spokesman at his medical practice in Witten, Germany, said.

During the weekend of Gray’s death, Ubani saw 13 patients before being called off his second shift when Gray’s death was reported to his managers.

Police and doctors investigating what happened found the 66-year-old had given inappropriate treatment to two other patients, one of whom subsequently died.

Both should have been sent to hospital, but their cases did not form part of a criminal case later built against him.

The case has become a touchstone for public confidence – or otherwise – in out-of-hours GP services, which were revamped more than five years ago.

A new GP contract introduced then shifted responsibility for out-of-hours services from local doctors and put it in the hands of NHS bodies and private firms employing a mix of local GPs, locums from agencies, and sometimes doctors from abroad.

Despite the problems identified in recent months, ministers have insisted services are improving overall.

Ubani was paid £45 an hour for his first work as a locum in the UK, far less than the sums expected by British GPs. He also paid for his own flights, car hire and accommodation.

The story of Gray’s death and the subsequent apology from Ubani to his family was first revealed by the Guardian in May.

It quickly raised concerns about EU rules on the registration of doctors from Europe, checks on competence by local primary care trusts, the way in which drug safety warnings are given within the NHS, and how European arrest warrants work.

Police and prosecutors from the UK looking to bring a possible manslaughter charge against Ubani were shocked last April when, by letter, the German authorities convicted Ubani of causing Gray’s death by negligence, gave him a nine-month suspended prison sentence and ordered him to pay €5,000 (£4,400)

Ubani, a German national, is suspended from working in Britain but is still allowed to practise in Witten, his home town, where he specialises in cosmetic surgery and anti-ageing medicine.

In August, inquiries by the Guardian prompted the General Medical Council and the Royal College of GPs to demand a rewriting of EU rules that allow doctors from Europe to be registered in the UK without tests on their English or medical competence.

Doctors from the rest of the world already face such checks.

The following month, it emerged that Ubani had failed in his first attempt to work in the UK but was later approved to join a performers’ list run by the NHS because a local health trust did not apply such stringent checks as the government demanded.

Soon afterwards, an interim report on the case by the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), prompted the Department of Health to order all 152 NHS organisations responsible for running out-of-hours services to do their own safety checks on induction and training of foreign doctors, call handling and prioritising of cases, clinical decisions made by GPs and other staff, and the management of powerful drugs.

In December, the scale of the communications breakdown between police and prosecutors in the UK and Germany over the handling of the criminal case against Ubani was laid bare.

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/04/doctor-daniel-ubani-unlawfully-killed-patient

William Moyes, who steps down from his role as executive chairman of Monitor after six years told The Times that too many hospitals were not grasping the economic challenges ahead.

While political parties have promised to protect NHS funding and avoid service cuts, Mr Moyes said it was inevitable that some hospitals would have to reduce services and sell off assets to keep afloat.

Any hospital department that was treating too few patients to cover its costs risked compromising the quality of care, he said. Some maternity and paediatric units, which are very costly to run, might be merged or relocated, while A&E; departments could be downgraded to minor injury units if they had a small number of serious cases that could be sent elsewhere.

“People need to know where they are making money or losing money. If you find a service where the income can’t cover the cost, you may eventually have to question whether the income is ever going to be sufficient, and whether this is in fact the wrong activity for the hospital.

“In quite a lot of places the number of births is too small to support the cost of giving a high-quality service. You have three choices: increase the flow of patients, move the service elsewhere or stay as you are and risk compromising the care.”

Mr Moyes, who oversees the regulation of finances and governance of England’s 125 flagship foundation trusts, said that as well as focusing on core departments, trusts would need to consider stripping out “uneconomic” facilities such as pathology laboratories and scanning units in some hospitals that were being used for very small numbers of patients.

“There may be surplus assets — buildings, land, equipment, stuff they think they might need in years to come under their development plans — and in some cases working in a much smaller physical space and disposing of all the hospital penumbra that can be brought into the main building.”

Mr Moyes said he had requested that foundation trust chief executives resubmit a “downside assessment” — stripping back their budgets — to get a more realistic grasp of the funding pressures they faced. He said that he was disappointed when, on being asked to revise their financial predictions in September, a number of trusts had resubmitted even more rosetinted forecasts of growth.

“You can’t assume everything will go well and if a problem arises the Department of Health will bail you out,” he said.

His warnings were echoed yesterday by Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, who described the coming years as “extremely challenging”. Giving evidence to the Commons Health Select Committee, Sir David warned of pay cuts and service reorganisation. “It is going to be very tough,” he said, adding that tighter budgets would mean the 1 per cent pay cap demanded by the Treasury would be treated by NHS managers as a maximum rise, not an entitlement. His comments came a day after inflation hit 2.9 per cent when unions are already angry over a pay freeze on council workers.

“There is essentially a trade-off between pay and numbers of jobs,” he told the committee. “In a cash-limited system, that is the big unknown for us. We need to talk through with the trade unions and staff associations about what that trade-off is.”

Sir David has previously warned that the NHS would have to find productivity and efficiency savings of between £15 billion and £20 billion over the three years 2011-12 to 2013-14.

The head of the Audit Commission added to the debate, saying that political pledges to safeguard spending on health and education were “insane”.

Steve Bundred told the Commons public administration committee that billions would have to be saved. “It seems to me absurd to imagine that the only services where no efficiencies can be found are those that have been the most generously funded for ten years,” he said.

Mr Moyes said he thought that an “unintended benefit” of future economic turbulence would be to heighten hospitals’ understanding that they had to operate with a robust business model.

“A lot of hospitals, even the very good ones, are at the stage of learning how to think long-term,” he said. “We are good at strong visions, big pictures, but we need to learn to be very good at pessimism and what will happen if things are not going to turn out well.”

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, says he wants doctors to provide cover at night and weekends, or pay other GPs to provide reliable care. Performance targets which helped to boost the salaries of some GPs to more than £250,000 would also be renegotiated under a Tory government.

Under existing contracts agreed six years ago, GPs can opt out of providing after-hours services, shifting the responsibility to local primary care trusts (PCTs). One in three trusts struggles to find local GPs and flies in foreign doctors who are paid as much as £800 a shift to work unpopular hours.

Lansley confirmed a shake-up of contracts as an inquest last week examined the death of David Gray, a 70-year-old retired engineer from Cambridgeshire. He was killed by a massive overdose of diamorphine in February 2008 administered by Daniel Ubani, a Nigerian-born doctor who had flown in from Germany. Ubani had slept for only three hours before starting his shift.

“When Labour took responsibility for out-of-hours care away from GPs they made a serious error,” said Lansley.

“GPs should be collectively responsible for commissioning out-of-hours services. They are best placed to ensure patients are treated properly and that these awful events are never repeated again.”

Lansley could face a tough battle with GPs. One British Medical Association (BMA) representative said there was “not a cat in hell’s chance” of returning to the old system of the GP being ultimately responsible for out-of-hours care. He warned of mass resignations if contracts are to be torn up in this way.

For many years GPs considered themselves overworked and underpaid compared with hospital doctors. But in 2004 they successfully renegotiated their contracts with the National Health Service.

In what was seen as a coup for the profession, pay packets rose by 30% in the first year of the contracts, with the typical GP earning £106,000. Ministers later admitted they had blundered by seriously underestimating how many GPs would hit the pay-related targets included in the new contracts.

At the same time, GPs could opt out of providing round-the-clock care for patients if they gave up £6,000 a year in their salaries. Nine out of 10 GPs opted out. Out-of-hours cover is now provided by co-operatives run by GPs, private companies and PCTs.

“No one in their right mind would have designed the out-of-hours system in its current form,” said Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action Against Medical Accidents, which has campaigned for reform of the system. “There are a myriad different providers. The most common complaints are failures in making a proper diagnosis.”

Flaws in the system were highlighted by the case of Penny Campbell, 41, a journalist from north London who died in March 2005 despite six telephone calls and two face-to-face meetings with doctors working for an out-of-hours GP service. All failed to diagnose septicaemia.

Shortly before he became prime minister, Gordon Brown pledged to improve out-of-hours services. They started deteriorating in some areas in which trusts turned to foreign locums. One investigation found a third of PCTs were flying in GPs from Poland, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.

In the early hours of February 16, 2008, Ubani, 66, flew into Britain for a shift starting at 8am with Take Care Now, an out-of-hours service. By his own admission he was exhausted. Gray died after Ubani gave him 10 times the correct dose of a painkiller for kidney stones. Later the same day Ubani failed to send another patient, Iris Edwards, 86, to hospital and she died of a heart attack shortly afterwards.

Take Care Now has promoted itself to health authorities as a cheap out-of-hours service but GPs claims its low prices have come at the expense of quality.

Spot checks by NHS Cambridgeshire, a primary care trust, found “deficiencies” in the cover as recently as last November. The trust subsequently ended its contract with the company.

Gray’s son Stuart, a GP in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, said: “My father was betrayed by the system. All patients are being let down by the NHS because of the lack of vetting procedures and rules in place for EU doctors. It is a national scandal.”

The Tories believe that handing back responsibility for out-of-hours care to GPs will ensure a better service.
 

* April 2004 New contracts introduced for GPs, allowing doctors to drop out-of-hours cover.
* March 2005 Penny Campbell, a 41-year-old mother, dies of blood poisoning after consulting out-of-hours GP service eight times. Official inquiry finds “major system failure”.
* May 2006 National Audit Office finds only one in 10 trusts clinically assesses patient within 20 minutes of phone call.
* February 2008 David Gray, 70, is killed by an overdose accidentally given by Daniel Ubani, a locum out-of-hours doctor who flew in from Germany.
* June 2009 Care Quality Commission report on Gray’s death calls for fresh scrutiny of use of “non-local” doctors and improved training.

Such a deal makes even less financial sense in a country still struggling to escape the effects of the worst slump since the Great Depression. Yet this is what the labour Government’s promotion of private finance initiatives (PFIs) to pay for public services has foisted on the taxpayer.

The taxpayer is, in effect, locked into making enormous annual payments for 667 school, hospital and other public-sector programmes with a capital value, or price, of around £55bn. The good news is that more than £37bn has been paid. 

And that is not all. With a fresh catalogue of further projects valued at £11bn – in capital costs alone – currently under negotiation, Britain’s liability for PFI projects since 1997 could exceed £300bn.

The PFI – the brainchild of the former Conservative chancellor Norman Lamont – was seized upon by Tony Blair in 1997, when he swept into power with a New Labour government determined to show that it could be the party of business. The Government committed itself to keeping the proportion of public debt to gross national product (GNP) below 40 per cent. Financing investment through PFI – with costs kept off the balance sheet – was seen as a way of achieving this, and led Alan Milburn, then health minister, to declare that PFI was “the only game in town”.

PFI works on the principle of private firms building various forms of infrastructure – whether roads or bridges, schools, hospitals or prisons – then charging the public sector for using them over lengthy contracts that can run for more than 30 years.

But it has left a legacy of debt that will last a generation, according to unions who have slammed what they say is a credit-card approach to buying-in essential services. Calling for an end to the use of PFI to pay for public sector projects, Brian Strutton, the GMB’s national secretary for public services, said: “PFI is building up a legacy of high-interest debt that will last for decades. The public is paying over the odds on PFI projects, with debt ratios in most areas at over 500 per cent. This is like paying for schools and hospitals by credit card.”

Jean Shaoul, professor of public accountability at Manchester Business School, said: “They’ve mortgaged the future in the most profligate way… we have a government that acts in the interests of a financial oligarchy. Using the private sector as an intermediary to raise finance to build hospitals and to run them is extremely expensive and far more expensive than if the Government were to do it itself.”

A case in point is the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, where the PFI consortium made tens of millions on a deal described by the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”.

Firms have also made millions in profit by putting up the money for IT programmes that have become so expensive the Government now frowns on PFI being used to fund them. To take only one case: payments for the Crown Prosecution Service’s Compass IT system come to £670m over the 10 years of the contract, 37 times the £18m capital value.

And the nature of PFI deals means that payments still have to be made even if the project is abandoned. Balmoral High School in Belfast closed six years after it was built, when pupil numbers halved. However, the Northern Ireland Department of Education owes the contractor £370,000 a year for the next 18 years.

Making changes to PFI-funded buildings and projects can cause costs to spiral. A 2008 National Audit Office report found that £180m a year is paid out for contractual amendments. And it highlighted extortionate charges for routine maintenance – such as £302 for an electric socket to be fitted, £47 for a key, and almost £500 to fit a lock.

Peter Dixon, chief executive of University College London Hospital – which pays some £43m in PFI charges a year – says that inflation is a real fear. “If we run into a bout of inflation, because all these payments are index-linked, then we are in trouble, all of us.”

He described the arrangement as “expensive and inflexible”, but added: “For the past 12 years the only way you were going to get a brand new hospital was by the PFI route… people knew they weren’t cost effective but it was the only way they could get funding.”

But a Treasury spokesman said: “PFI has a good record of delivering to time and budget, and represents good value for money over the whole life costing by telling us what it will cost to build and manage our assets.”

Contracting out: Familiar faces with PFI connections

Alan Milburn MP
He famously described PFIs as the “only game in town” during a stint as health minister, and is now a director of Diaverum Healthcare – a company that is contracted to run the kidney dialysis unit at the PFI-funded Burnley General Hospital.

Quentin Davies MP
The Defence minister is a former director (he resigned in 2008) of Vinci UK and Vinci SA – firms involved in PFI projects with a total capital value of £223m which will cost £933m over the terms of their contracts.

John Reid MP
The former home secretary is (since November 2009) a paid consultant to G4S UK and Ireland. G4S is involved in PFIs, mainly in prisons, with a total capital value of £330m; they will end up costing £3.6bn.

Steven Norris
Once Conservative Transport minister under John Major, he is now the chairman of Jarvis, a major PFI player which has a number of contracts, worth £721m, with government. The total capital value of PFI programmes funded by Jarvis comes to £175m.

Adam Ingram MP
A defence minister for six years under Tony Blair, he now gets paid more than £50,000 a year as a consultant to Electronic Data Systems – an MoD contractor responsible for the PFI-funded Tafmis IT system which cost £171m over its 10-year contract.

Patricia Hewitt MP
During her tenure as health secretary, BT won IT contracts from the NHS. The former minister is now a director of BT Group and was paid £59,475 for 140 hours’ work over the past six months – a rate of £424 an hour.

PFI initiatives – the Lords’ inquiry

The continuing flaws in the PFI option have been exposed in evidence to a House of Lords inquiry into the system.

A consultant, T Martin Blaiklock, said the Government had used the PFI option “like a credit card”. He added: “It allows payments, which would normally be due to be paid today, to be paid at some future date. The key is to know when to use it, for what, and for how much.”

The British Medical Association said: “PFI appears to be an unnecessarily costly and short-sighted means of building new hospitals.”

But the Confederation of British Industry claimed that PFIs had helped to deliver a broad range of modern projects with “high-quality services and maintenance activities”.

It added: “Without this long-term investment, the UK would not have the infrastructure required to support our economy, nor the public services that are needed.”

The soaring cost to taxpayers

Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton Cost £73.5m to build, but will cost taxpayers
in excess of £340m by 2034.

John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford Taxpayers will have to pay back £832m for key developments at a hospital which cost £134m to build.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Greenwich Trust is locked into a PFI deal costing £9m a year more than if it had borrowed money from the Government. Last year it admitted its PFI contract is “underfunded” by £8m to £10m a year, and it was also carrying debts of £65m.

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital The 953-bed hospital will cost not £229m, as announced in 1998, but £16bn, including PFI charges, staff and equipment. Rent costs are £800m until the end of the contract in 2037.

Paddington Health Scheme £900m super-hospital abandoned in 2007; costs rose £300m to £894m and finish date slipped to 2013.

Leicester hospitals Pathway Project Costs up from £711m to £921m; scrapped in 2007.

University College London Hospital PFI project, rose from £120m to £430m or so in the three years prior to signing off on the deal.

From:

Such a deal makes even less financial sense in a country still struggling to escape the effects of the worst slump since the Great Depression. Yet this is what the labour Government’s promotion of private finance initiatives (PFIs) to pay for public services has foisted on the taxpayer.

The taxpayer is, in effect, locked into making enormous annual payments for 667 school, hospital and other public-sector programmes with a capital value, or price, of around £55bn. The good news is that more than £37bn has been paid. 

And that is not all. With a fresh catalogue of further projects valued at £11bn – in capital costs alone – currently under negotiation, Britain’s liability for PFI projects since 1997 could exceed £300bn.

The PFI – the brainchild of the former Conservative chancellor Norman Lamont – was seized upon by Tony Blair in 1997, when he swept into power with a New Labour government determined to show that it could be the party of business. The Government committed itself to keeping the proportion of public debt to gross national product (GNP) below 40 per cent. Financing investment through PFI – with costs kept off the balance sheet – was seen as a way of achieving this, and led Alan Milburn, then health minister, to declare that PFI was “the only game in town”.

PFI works on the principle of private firms building various forms of infrastructure – whether roads or bridges, schools, hospitals or prisons – then charging the public sector for using them over lengthy contracts that can run for more than 30 years.

But it has left a legacy of debt that will last a generation, according to unions who have slammed what they say is a credit-card approach to buying-in essential services. Calling for an end to the use of PFI to pay for public sector projects, Brian Strutton, the GMB’s national secretary for public services, said: “PFI is building up a legacy of high-interest debt that will last for decades. The public is paying over the odds on PFI projects, with debt ratios in most areas at over 500 per cent. This is like paying for schools and hospitals by credit card.”

Jean Shaoul, professor of public accountability at Manchester Business School, said: “They’ve mortgaged the future in the most profligate way… we have a government that acts in the interests of a financial oligarchy. Using the private sector as an intermediary to raise finance to build hospitals and to run them is extremely expensive and far more expensive than if the Government were to do it itself.”

A case in point is the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, where the PFI consortium made tens of millions on a deal described by the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”.

Firms have also made millions in profit by putting up the money for IT programmes that have become so expensive the Government now frowns on PFI being used to fund them. To take only one case: payments for the Crown Prosecution Service’s Compass IT system come to £670m over the 10 years of the contract, 37 times the £18m capital value.

And the nature of PFI deals means that payments still have to be made even if the project is abandoned. Balmoral High School in Belfast closed six years after it was built, when pupil numbers halved. However, the Northern Ireland Department of Education owes the contractor £370,000 a year for the next 18 years.

Making changes to PFI-funded buildings and projects can cause costs to spiral. A 2008 National Audit Office report found that £180m a year is paid out for contractual amendments. And it highlighted extortionate charges for routine maintenance – such as £302 for an electric socket to be fitted, £47 for a key, and almost £500 to fit a lock.

Peter Dixon, chief executive of University College London Hospital – which pays some £43m in PFI charges a year – says that inflation is a real fear. “If we run into a bout of inflation, because all these payments are index-linked, then we are in trouble, all of us.”

He described the arrangement as “expensive and inflexible”, but added: “For the past 12 years the only way you were going to get a brand new hospital was by the PFI route… people knew they weren’t cost effective but it was the only way they could get funding.”

But a Treasury spokesman said: “PFI has a good record of delivering to time and budget, and represents good value for money over the whole life costing by telling us what it will cost to build and manage our assets.”

Contracting out: Familiar faces with PFI connections

Alan Milburn MP
He famously described PFIs as the “only game in town” during a stint as health minister, and is now a director of Diaverum Healthcare – a company that is contracted to run the kidney dialysis unit at the PFI-funded Burnley General Hospital.

Quentin Davies MP
The Defence minister is a former director (he resigned in 2008) of Vinci UK and Vinci SA – firms involved in PFI projects with a total capital value of £223m which will cost £933m over the terms of their contracts.

John Reid MP
The former home secretary is (since November 2009) a paid consultant to G4S UK and Ireland. G4S is involved in PFIs, mainly in prisons, with a total capital value of £330m; they will end up costing £3.6bn.

Steven Norris
Once Conservative Transport minister under John Major, he is now the chairman of Jarvis, a major PFI player which has a number of contracts, worth £721m, with government. The total capital value of PFI programmes funded by Jarvis comes to £175m.

Adam Ingram MP
A defence minister for six years under Tony Blair, he now gets paid more than £50,000 a year as a consultant to Electronic Data Systems – an MoD contractor responsible for the PFI-funded Tafmis IT system which cost £171m over its 10-year contract.

Patricia Hewitt MP
During her tenure as health secretary, BT won IT contracts from the NHS. The former minister is now a director of BT Group and was paid £59,475 for 140 hours’ work over the past six months – a rate of £424 an hour.

PFI initiatives – the Lords’ inquiry

The continuing flaws in the PFI option have been exposed in evidence to a House of Lords inquiry into the system.

A consultant, T Martin Blaiklock, said the Government had used the PFI option “like a credit card”. He added: “It allows payments, which would normally be due to be paid today, to be paid at some future date. The key is to know when to use it, for what, and for how much.”

The British Medical Association said: “PFI appears to be an unnecessarily costly and short-sighted means of building new hospitals.”

But the Confederation of British Industry claimed that PFIs had helped to deliver a broad range of modern projects with “high-quality services and maintenance activities”.

It added: “Without this long-term investment, the UK would not have the infrastructure required to support our economy, nor the public services that are needed.”

The soaring cost to taxpayers

Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton Cost £73.5m to build, but will cost taxpayers in excess of £340m by 2034.

John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford Taxpayers will have to pay back £832m for key developments at a hospital which cost £134m to build.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Greenwich Trust is locked into a PFI deal costing £9m a year more than if it had borrowed money from the Government. Last year it admitted its PFI contract is “underfunded” by £8m to £10m a year, and it was also carrying debts of £65m.

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital The 953-bed hospital will cost not £229m, as announced in 1998, but £16bn, including PFI charges, staff and equipment. Rent costs are £800m until the end of the contract in 2037.

Paddington Health Scheme £900m super-hospital abandoned in 2007; costs rose £300m to £894m and finish date slipped to 2013.

Leicester hospitals Pathway Project Costs up from £711m to £921m; scrapped in 2007.

University College London Hospital PFI project, rose from £120m to £430m or so in the three years prior to signing off on the deal.

From: