I WAS very interested in Martin Hannan’s piece on Private Finance Initiative (PFI: The disaster we should have seen coming, April 21).
PFI was condemned by Labour, and they used it to attack the Tories until 1997. When they won the election in that year, they rechristened it PPP (Public Private Partership) and Chancellor Gordon Brown said it was the “only game in town”. The finance charges in every PFI/PPP contract must be paid, even before wages for medical staff.
It is no surprise NHS Tayside is consistently overspent; one wonders what sum in PFI/PPP charges is due on Ninewells Hospital? Other hospitals include Hairmyres – designated by Jim Cuthbert, former statistician for the Scotland Office, as “one hospital for the price of two” and Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Gordon Brown’s quick fix was anything but, conveniently ignored by current Scottish Labour Leader, Richard Leonard – or perhaps he just doesn’t know?
Jim Lynch
Edinburgh
FURTHER to Martin Hannan’s article on PFI, Labour has never apologised for lumbering Edinburgh with expensive, collapsing and dangerous schools or for burdening Lothian Health Board with £1.5 billion costs for Edinburgh Royal Infirmary that cost £226 million to build under PFI, while attacking the SNP’s non-profit distributing (NPD) funding model that has at least reduced the cost of infrastructure projects in Scotland by more than half when compared to Labour PFIs.
However, Labour forget that the Welsh Government has committed to infrastructure projects using the NPD model, including the redevelopment of the Velindre Cancer Centre; “dualling” of sections 5 and 6 of the A465; and the 21st Century Schools Project. On September 30 2015, the Welsh Government published a written statement providing an update on the 21st Century Schools NPD Programme, in which the success of NPD was praised for delivering value for money.
This followed an earlier announcement at a Financing Welsh Infrastructure event, which “outlined how innovative finance, including through the NPD investment model, and new borrowing powers would help the Welsh Government to boost economic growth, address austerity, and support sustainable jobs.”
Fraser Grant
Edinburgh
IT’S hardly correct to claim no-one was aware of the potential flaws of PFI when opposition was widely highlighted at the time, but ignored by politicians now consigned to history who seized on it as an expedient way to acquire infrastructure that years of government economic mismanagement had rendered financially difficult to afford.
Wasn’t it just government doing the very same as the rest of us? Buy now, pay later, and pay exorbitant interest rates for the privilege, the common practice in “treasure island” Britain that spawned a debt of £1.5 trillion, which in the pursuit of the illusion of economic strength is only now spoken of in whispers by government ministers?
The new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (ERI) was quoted with a build cost of £234 million and a PFI cost of at least £1.3 billion over 30 years. This was the headline cost, and we knew at the time other associated aspects of the contract would glean additional lucrative profit streams for the contractors.
Yes, government ticked a political box for building a much-needed hospital, but how on earth was this ever going to be a medium-to-long-term sound financial deal for taxpayers?
Reputedly, the Old Royal Infirmary site was sold for a song at £10m. On that site now stand numerous expensive residential and business properties that simple arithmetic suggests are a huge profit centre for commerce, but not for taxpayers.
The whole exercise was and remains a scandal, steamrollered through by politicians ticking their box, and who knows what in the hinterland of their actions.
If the trams have now avoided the label, isn’t the ERI PFI scandal now the second disgrace of Edinburgh?
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
LESLEY-ANNE McLelland (Letters, April 21) outlines an excellent plan for a national retail bank to make use of former RBS infrastructure and premises in those communities that the RBS and other major banks are now withdrawing from. This is in many ways an obvious thing to do.
I would suggest that this bank should not be headquartered in Edinburgh, however. I don’t think it necessarily healthy for all Scotland’s financial services to be centralised in Edinburgh. Perhaps other towns and cities could bid for the headquarters? Perhaps the national retail bank should focus on small towns and rural communities that the emerging banking models simply don’t value any longer.
If Scotland does not have the vision or capability undertake a project such as this then I would argue independence will remain a pipe dream. Unless substantial progress towards national infrastructure such as this is made before the next independence referendum, I think we will lose once again.
Kenny Wright
InverYess
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