Interesting example of bias by omission here;
“HM Treasury is failing to monitor “excessive” profits from the selling-on of PFI (private finance initiative) equity, the BBC has been told. One industry analyst says its “inadequate” records do not reflect the billions of pounds made in the so-called secondary PFI market. Ian Swales, MP, said the large profits made raised serious questions about whether the deals to finance, build and maintain hospitals and schools under PFI were good value for money for the taxpayer in the first place. “By definition…the taxpayer got a bad deal at the start, or there wouldn’t have been these super-profits to be made” Ian Swales, MP Describing the profits as “excessive”, he said: “It’s a wealth machine. It’s not necessarily printing money, but it’s virtually that, given the scale of these profits.”
Yes, and which genius Chancellor shifted them off the books so they wouldn’t count against the budget, and kept borrowing and borrowing money to pay for them? Robert Peston wrote a book about him, so the BBC is aware.
…and yet, in denial!
Lessons have been learned-time to move on-we have closure-we are where we are-draw a line under it and …yes,move on!
Truly these serial Labour liars and leeches were all born under a wandering star…
To be fair, Radio 4 had a prog at 8pm tonight about the excessive profits being made out of PFI schemes – specifically the way the construction companies who built the hospitals, schools etc then sell their shares in the “project company” to othewr companies in the “secondary market” that will then bleed the taxpayer for 30 or more years with lucrative service contracts – cleaning, maintenance etc. The original project companies are making usually over 50% profit on their original outlay – compared with the typical 2% or so for the construction industry over the past few years.
It really is an enormous scandal – primarily political because Labour knew for years that PFI schemes were imposing huge annual runing costs on the taxpayer (eg £40 million a year for a hospital in Hampshire). But it is also a lesson in how inept our civil servants are in overseeing these things – much of the excessive profit is being “scored” offshore and therefore is not taxable.
Also – while Tories fulminate publicly about the PFI approach, they are letting dozens or hundreds more schemes go ahead, and have still done nothing to improve financial oversight and strictness. Thus following on in Brown’s footsteps.