Workers Party concerned over potential public-private funding for NHS
The Workers Party has raised concerns following reports that the Labour government is considering using public-private funding for the National Health Service.
Ministers are expected to make a final decision in the autumn budget about whether to adopt this funding approach, which was paused eight years ago. Even the Tories recognised this was not a good deal for the public purse.
It seems lessons have not been learned about the pitfalls of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). Have they forgotten the chaos unleashed by the 2018 collapse of the mega-contractor Carillion?
In the past, Labour has made significant use of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) to build schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure. However, the taxpayer was often left to foot the bill for inflexible contracts that could run for as long as 30 years, and these deals never represented good value for the public.
These deals have been widely used in Northern Ireland for hospitals and schools. For example, a West Belfast school closed just a few years after opening, yet the education department was tied into a 25-year contract and had to continue making payments until the contract ended. More than twenty PPP contacts are still in operation in Northern Ireland, in health, infrastructure, water and other areas. A union general secretary has warned that basing any funding on a failed market system would be a major mistake, especially since the government claims money is tight.
Research from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research this year looked at a thousand schools built through PFI and found that £13.5 billion was being spent locally on repayments, with 31% of that going toward interest payments, which is certainly not value for money.
Max Mosley of the New Economics Foundation says that when these projects fail, it carries "devastating consequences, from huge costs levied on hospitals, to 'state-of-the-art' schools having to close."
The Workers Party is calling on the Executive Parties and scrutiny committees to ensure that Northern Ireland has learned from past mistakes and will instead use traditional procurement processes with government capital funding, which represents better value for money.
