Letter

PFI: A painfully flawed initiative?

Dear healthmatters—Dexter Whitfield is right to suggest that the Private Finance Initiative will lead to problems for the NHS (2007: look back in anger, healthmatters issue 28).

Not only is paying for money borrowed from the private sector more expensive than paying for money borrowed by the state, but the long-term debt will inevitably lock the NHS into patterns of service provision which look sensible today, but may seem hopelessly outdated in ten, or perhaps even only five, years time.

And then what? Keep expensive hospital facilities running just because the taxpayer is renting the building? Or relocate the services more appropriately, but keep paying for an empty shell?

He is also right to point out that women workers will be particularly badly affected by PFI schemes, just as they were by compulsory competitive tendering and then again by the local pay fiasco.

It is extremely worrying that Labour seems to be prepared to continue with this disastrous Tory policy, which can do no good to the NHS in the long term.

There is a clear alternative: the state must make the capital investment available. The sums involved are not that large, compared with the size of the NHS budget, and could easily be found from the defence budget by cancelling, for example, the Trident and Eurofighter programmes.

As a last resort, taxes would have to go up. But better that than an NHS slowly moving into private hands.