Private Finance Initiative: hospitals will bring taxpayers 60 years of pain

[dipsydoodle]

Source: The Telegraph

Young people starting work this year will pay taxes for the Government’s Private Finance Initiative until they are nearly 70, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found.

Official figures show that, under Private Finance Initiative schemes, British taxpayers are committed to pay £229 billion for new hospitals, schools and other projects with a capital value of just £56 billion. Several contracts are due to run for 60 years, documents released under freedom of information requests show, meaning taxpayers will be paying for the projects for generations to come.

Private contractors who agreed PFI deals with the Government are set to make billions of pounds in profit, with some due to see returns of up to 71 per cent.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8279974/Private-Finance-Initiative-hospitals-will-bring-taxpayers-60-years-of-pain.html

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This is headline news in tomorrows paper edition.

Thank you New Fucking Labour - you pack of ****'s

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. As the comments say, the Telgraph is a little late

Which is surprising, since you'd think they'd have taken the opportunity to criticise Labour about it at the time.

Earlier articles: http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x89100

Sadly, the Private Eye supplement on it never appeared on the web, as far as I can tell.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Thanks for those links

Yes - an Enron-style off-balance sheet accounting scam.

[valerief]

3. WOW! Brits pay for things they can use. We Americans ONLY PAY FOR WAR!!!!

[LeftishBrit]

5. In this case...

it's a matter of us paying for the (admittedly only partial) *privatization* of things we use.

Those in power keep telling us it saves money and is more efficient, but it's quite the reverse.

[Denzil_DC]

4. K&R

The Torygraph unsurprisingly fails to note that it all started under the Major government in 1992! But the continued use of this mechanism and PPPs to pay for things such as schools is one of the most shameful legacies of New Labour.