HAVING been ostracised by New Labour in Worcester for publicly opposing the transfer of public services and their employees to the private sector in these columns (You Say, March 22, 2002), I take some comfort from the recent decision of the annual conference of the Labour Party to put the brakes on future Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects.

PFI is the most perverse of policies for a socialist party to adopt. The private consortiums who trumpet the workings of capitalism and the "virtues" of the competitive market are being handed 30 years of uninterrupted and guaranteed cash flows immune from the ups and downs of the markets.

They will seek to maximise profits to their shareholders by minimising expenditure on their obligations to provide services and maintain buildings.

They will make "savings" from employing low-paid workers that will not accrue to the NHS, only to the consortia. The NHS can only look forward to the sort of poor performance that it has experienced with cleaning contractors already.

Contrast this with the collapse of guaranteed income private pensions and their replacement by pensions linked to the stock market.

As the years roll by, and future Chancellors of the Exchequer sign annual cheques for billions to PFI consortia, we should not be surprised when the state pension and other state-funded benefits are squeezed out as "unaffordable" to future generations.

PFI is another New Labour-Tory policy. Labour Party members should stick to their guns and turn the tide against PFI and the like before the whole of the public sector becomes "unaffordable".

PETER NIELSEN, Worcester.