How can anyone fail to see through PFI?

[ciphergoth]

How can anyone think using private money to build hospitals and schools is a good idea? As far as I can see the reasons not to are screamingly obvious and pretty irrefutable - am i missing something?

If it's private, it's an investment. If it's an investment, they'll give money now in return for more money later. If they want more money later, it'll have to come from the taxpayer. Ergo, the total cost to the taxpayer in the long term is greater with PFI.

Is this not the bleeding obvious?

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Prescott admitted as much today in his rather garbled speech to conference. Apparently they're having to take on what are, in effect, private sector loans, he claims, because the new things are required now (twenty years of underinvestment, blah, blah) and we apparently don't have the cash. Why they have to take out this stupid and expensive form of loan, though, (if this is the case) rather than just borrowing, I don't know.

There was a guy on the radio who said something interesting last night. He was talking about how the private sector apparently claims to assume the risk (and the corresponding cut) but as was seen from Railtrack, the risk is still in the public sector in that if a hospital or school got into trouble there'd be no choice, politically, but jumping in and taking over. So the government pay for the risk twice.
There's a good article today in the paper by Kinnock. He seems to have his head screwed on. He's a bit coy about PFI and Iraq but, reading what he says, I dispair that he's not leader now.