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April 3, 2009 Unite the Union is delighted that the campaign against the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) rebuild of the Royal Liverpool Hospital has met with success, in terms of the granting of a judicial review of the consultative process by the Royal Courts of Justice. We congratulate Sam Semoff with his commendable efforts. PFI is a scandal at the best of times, but handing over the city's major hospital to private financiers at this time of banking insolvency and global recession would be downright irresponsible. Typically, NHS Trusts pay an annual fee to cover the capital cost, including the cost of borrowing, and any non-clinical services that the private sector provides over the contract period, which is usually 30 – 60 years. Research by Hellowell & Pollock ('Private Finance, Public Debt', 2007) found that by 2013/14, when all of schemes in the current programme are in operation, PFI payments will be £2.3 billion a year. In total, the amount of money to be repaid by NHS Trusts will almost double, from around £50 billion in 2005/06, to more than £90 billion by 2013/14. Most crucially, the cost of PFI contracts for NHS Trusts tends to be greater than the capital (i.e. the value of the actual building the NHS gets at the end of the contract). Hellowell & Pollock linked the debt that Trusts began to carry to the level of future services, stating that "Crucially this under-funding has led to the emergence of financial deficits, and, under government pressure to balance the books, plans for further cuts to services.” Sam Semoff and the Keep Our NHS Public Campaign (KONP) are right to defend the city's health services and institutions remaining in public hands. Far from being 'ideological', this is simple common sense! We hope the Liverpool public realise what is at stake if this rebuild proceeds on the proposed basis, and we look forward to the full hearing of the case in May. Yours truly,
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