Dingdongler

Can't provide linky as I'm on my phone but today it has been revealed that a South London hospital trust is effectively 'bankrupt'

It had a new hospital built under Labour's PFI scheme. This scheme was an accounting trick to build hospitals we couldn't afford. In this way the debt was kept off the balance sheet so Moron Brown could pretend our debt to GDP ratio was below is magic number.

Like all accounting tricks they eventually come back to haunt you and now they have

I'm not overly impressed by the Tories at the moment but this is just another example of Labour spending us into bankruptcy and then the Tories having to spend years being 'the bad guys' to sort it out.

This Trust is just the tip of the iceberg there are plenty more out there that basically can't pay their PFI mortgage payments.

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

PFI was started under the Tory Government........

Shaun

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

What's your point, Shaun?

Does that make it OK for labour to have done this then?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

FFS they are all the same, they are all lying self serving greedy *****, why any of you bother trying to differentiate between them is beyond me!!!!

Martin2005

Or is it just another example of Labour having to fix a Tory neglected health service?

Truss

iTrader: (2)

Bang on. If it was just the UK in bother i'd wholehearted agree on Labour ****ing us over, but its not it it?

Devildog

Could be worse, they could be football fans too

RobsyUK

iTrader: (2)

Did you see the panarama programme about this... Who in the government. agreed to such stupid pay back methods..

I bet Mr Virgin saves the day.. wouldn't mind one of his air hosteses holding my ***** and teling me to cough.

tony de wonderful

PFI seems a terrible idea. Not only is it more expensive than sovereign debt but the taxpayer takes on all the risk. Clever way to hide public liability 'off book' though.

Devildog

Six other NHS trusts face joining South London Healthcare in "administration" as they have taken on projects viewed by ministers as "unsustainable", it has emerged.

South London Healthcare NHS Trust will be the first in the country to be put under the control of a special administrator tasked with securing its finances.

The schemes saw private firms building hospitals, leaving the NHS with an annual fee to pay over around 30 years.

The total value of the NHS buildings built by Labour under the scheme is £11.4bn. But the bill, which will also include fees for maintenance, cleaning and portering, will come to more than £70bn on current projections and will not be paid off until 2049.

Some trusts are spending up to a fifth of their budget servicing the mortgages.


Looks like the blame for this particular issue lies firmly at Labour's door.

Just because something is able to be done, doesn't absolve the repsonsibility from those who do it badly

tony de wonderful

Where's Pete?

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Alcazar..........I was just pointing out to the OP that the rant against labour should have also been directed at the Tories as they started it LOL

PFI as it first started was a shared risk strategy so that if it all went pants the private sector money went down the pan. If it all went well then the NHS got a Hospital and the private sector got the return for their investment.

The contracts signed neglected the shared risk strategy and guarranteed the return on investment as the economy was very buoyant and it's that aspect of the PFI that has shafted the NHS............includinhg the hospital here in Carlisle where I work sometimes.

Blame the guys that drew up the contracts.

Shaun

Martin2005

I do agree, the terms on these deals look really poor value for public money.

I was merely pointing out that there is an element of cause and effect at work here

Dingdongler

Don't get me wrong this is not some PSL type trolling post. As I said in the first post I've been quite disappointed in many ways by the Tories. But even if PFI was in some way 'invented' by the Tories the PFI hospital building programme was all done under Labour.

As a result it shows just how grossly irresponsible they were with our finances and how generations to come will suffer as a result.

Martin it is not cause and effect. If Labour wanted to repair some neglect of the nhs by the Tories then they should have spent on it but saved elsewhere ie cut the welfare budget or not taken us into wars.

But they wanted to keep spending on EVERYTHING with no oversight, that is the issue imho

hodgy0_2

but it is almost impossible to do

to onerous and the contractors caveat the contract to buggery with change control clauses – ending up with £80.00 fees to change a light bulb

to soft and the contractors can deliver a **** poor service and just pay pathetic penalty clauses

the private sector will always run rings around weak and sycophantic civil servants in these negotiations

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Sounds like the private company that services our hospital building

Shaun

Martin2005

I agree on the cut welfare comment, the 'taken us into wars' bit is just poor thinking or a red-herring (I can't decide which)

Bikerboygreen

iTrader: (3)

Correct.

hodgy0_2

believe me, I have been party to these negotiations and it is utterly shocking

driven by short term careerism "across the piece" - to borrow a crap phrase i hear all too often (both public and private sector tbh)

and as I also post in the RBS thread it is destroying this country

jef

iTrader: (13)

im inclined to agree.

one party will f*ck up here, the other will f*ck up elsewhere.

the entire political system is flawed, but its deeply engrained. yes its resulted in many positive steps, but its riddled with corruption, double standards and has many people that have no genuine interest in trying to represent there people. But are driven by personal greed, others are just along for the free ride - then there are also a % that are geniunely trying to do there job effectivley.

managing such a vast number of people will always be difficult.

tony de wonderful

Yeah I can believe it, it's cut and run by career climbers not grey civil servants. The public sector used to be about boring stewardship now is full of the high flyer types who just care about pay and the next promotion.

Also I'm thinking lots of labour cronies involved in the sweet PFI deals.

hodgy0_2

when you actually lift the lid on PFI it is a bit like building the UK infrastructure using www.wonga.com for financing

it would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic

but they use the stock excuse/get out clause "we took expert/professional advice"

and when you try and collar these experts their get out clause is "we gave advice based on the information available"

and so you go round in circles, everyone responsible for these débâcle's, gets away scot free (with a fat pension)

Dingdongler

Well it's not a red herring so it must be poor thinking on my part.

I don't pretend to be an economist but the Labour govt had to make decisions on what to spend on. If it wanted to pump money into the NHS then money should have been saved elsewhere.

Labour spent billions of our tax revenues on taking us into a war that many millions of people feel was unnecessary and not in our national interest. These billions could have been used for the NHS rather than a flawed and financially crippling PFI scheme.

I'm not quite sure why you feel this is poor thinking

Martin2005

Not sure what you are talking about now

You said 'wars' earlier, now you say a war, what do you mean, please be clear?

It's poor thinking because you seem to imply that the government needs to make a choice between acting in the national interest, and/or repairing our public services.

Please remember that the cost of this war (in financial terms) is a relatively small amount over a relatively short time-frame compared to the long term cost and commitment of healthcare and education for example

tony de wonderful

Most of the spending was recycled back into the economy anyway.

Jimbob

iTrader: (13)

This is the reason why the Labour Party cannot ever be trusted to run anything other than a kids bouncy castle, and even then people should watch over them like a hawk.

As they would claim to run it fairly, and that the kids with more money wouldn`t be allowed on more than the kids with none. They would do a LOT of talking about how the last owners ran the bouncy castle to favour the rich so being "Elitist", but even though it made a profit and everyone had a go, they decided to change it. Their mates could go on when ever they wanted, ad their best mates they gave the tuck shop to as long as they said they could have some sweets , they made the rich pay more than the poor, and whilst being nice as pie to everyone went through their bags and wallets whilst they were on the ride. They also bought a new bouncy castle, but instead of buying one for £5000 they bought the £5000 but spent £5000000 on it. This put the price up and they hid this by selling off their tills takings and float all in gold, but they said they were doing this months in advance, so the price fell through the floor.

Then the leisure centre their bouncy castle was in ran into difficulty, making the rent go up, they couldn`t afford it so re mortgaged the whole lot giving us mahooooosive debt, that the bouncy castle will struggle to pay off, and they wanted to get into more debt to pay of the debt that they created.

Needless to say they lost the bouncy castle business and it was re taken over by the original group, so getting the business profitable again, but in the process making tough awkward decisions.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

You really do live in a ******* fantasy world don't you LOL!

Sadly in the real world the bouncy castle business when taken over was run on a shoesting budget and all the profits given to the owner and his mates until eventually the castle wore out and won't inflate any longer so no one can use it. The people operating it on the ground lost their jobs, the kids who used to play on it have no fun, but the owners ae so stinking rich they haven't noticed everyone else is fcuked!

Dingdongler

Oh, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. And to be pedantic over war or wars when discussing a financial black hole in the NHS is a little silly.

I still don't think it's poor thinking to say Labour had to choose where it spent the money, and millions of people don't feel the Iraq war was in our national interest.

Lots of countries do this all the time.

Also the cost of these rebuilds of hospitals is effectively a 'one off cost' it is not a long term investment in services/staff. The hospitals/services already existed, just the buildings were rebuilt. So it is also a short term cost like THE IRAQ WAR

You have now brought education and other public services into it when we are talking specifically about PFI for hospitals. Please be clear what we are talking about and don't throw in red herrings, it is not allowed on this thread

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

There was NEVER realistically going to be a shared risk, no matter what the contract might have said (and I'll agree that the contracts mostly involve the government of the day taking it up the ****er from the private contractor) because most PFI involve things that cannot be allowed to fail. So if it hits the rocks, the government start bailing. As is always the case, whatever happens, the tax-payer loses.

And as already stated, this was another stupid idea by the Tories, continued by Labour, and still kept going (with new contracts being signed) by the Coalition. All for the same reason: a short term boost to government finances, with later governments picking up the big long-term bill. Even if the shared risk bit was actually true, the government is still significantly worse off in the long term. But governments think long term is the next election, so keeping current spending down is what counts, not what a contract will cost over (say) fifty years.


M

Jimbob

iTrader: (13)

Nope. Old money know how to keep it and not go bankrupt, new money knows how to spend it. How its been for generations. Labour claim to be the party of the people, but most are career politicians, from rich backgrounds. They have never spent any time in the real world, and try to lecture to us the average worker. They are so far out of touch it's laughable.
And their handling of the countries bank account and credit card is proof of this.