Jojoe be careful what you wish for, as one is not better than the other regarding the nhs and the Private finance initiative as an example of that it was started by john major but Tony blair took it to a whole new level.
Meanwhile our local hospital will have spent six times the amount on the contract to refurbish and service the site than it actually costs, by the time payments are complete.
The project cost developers £326 million but, by the time it is paid off, interest and fees will take it the money forked out by NHS Sherwood Forest Hospitals to just over £2 billion. That’s payday lender rates if you ask me.
In 2017 there were around 700 PFI schemes in Britain, with an estimated capital value of about £59 bn but which cost taxpayers over £308 bn.
By 2050, when the NHS makes its final payment for the 118 PFI schemes to build or redevelop hospitals in England and Wales, it will have shelled out £78.3billion.
In the context of the NHS, the contract between a SPV and an NHS Trust can be for as long as 60 or even 100 years. The difference between the original cost of a building and what the Trust will have paid by the end of the contract is usually massive: there are instances where some NHS Trusts are paying almost 12 times the initial sum borrowed. It means that while investors in PFI schemes make extraordinary profits –sometimes as much as 40 to 70% in annual returns – the NHS Trusts involved have less money available in their operational budget for equipment, staffing and patient care and are therefore cutting services. Increasingly, Trusts with PFI contracts are going into financial deficit.
Take, for example, Bart’s Health, the biggest NHS Trust in England, which entered into a 35 year PFI contract for the provision of new medical facilities at two of its sites. The new buildings came into service in 2012. The cost of providing the facilities was £1.15 billion but with the cost of inflation-linked repayments rising every year, the total cost to the Trust will be £7 billion by the end of the contract. In 2015 alone, repayments will amount to £143.6 million, with the Trust running a budget deficit of over £90 million. In the same year, the Trust received one of the worst inspection reports ever issued by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The CQC, which had previously placed the Trust in to Special Measures, rated services at Barts Health as ‘Inadequate’: concerns included poor patient safety, a high rate of cancelled operations, and high levels of stress and low morale amongst staff.
So that the reason the nhs is in the state it’s in and where the money goe’s.