SIR – Mike Foster MP is spinning again when he draws attention to the out-dated buildings in Castle Street and Ronkswood as though their replacement was impossible without a PFI deal (Worcester News, November 3).
PFI debts cannot be refinanced without harsh penalties. Hospitals looking for savings have to cut clinical services. Hospitals needing to expand, contract or reorganise are trapped in their original design for 30 years. Under PFI, changes such as a new multi-storey car park for the Worcestershire Royal, for example, are virtually impossible to finance.
Tory MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the House of Commons public accounts committee, calls PFI contract terms “the unacceptable face of capitalism.”Acceptable, apparently, to Mr Foster.
By November 2007, PFI had committed future governments to pay back £170 billion by 2032 for more than 800 PFI schemes. Add to this the £600 billion bank bailouts and the £170 billion quantitative easing ‘print run’, you have to ask why it was not possible for the Government to issue bonds in the first place to finance the £83 million Worcestershire Royal?
PFI is a gift to New Labour’s City friends and a penalty on future generations of taxpayers.
Peter Nielsen
Worcester
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here