Private sector `very close' to forsaking NHS
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Your support makes all the difference.The Government's private finance initiative is in danger of foundering in the National Health Service, a former director of National Health Service finance warned yesterday.
The flagship policy (PFI) - aimed at getting the private sector to finance, build and even run NHS hospitals and other facilities - is "at the crossroads", with the private sector "very close to walking away from it" Gordon Greenshields, a private-sector consultant and a former director of finance on the NHS executive, said.
Failure would have serious implications for capital spending, he warned, because the Government is cutting spending on capital and switching the money to revenue in order to honour its manifesto promise of real-terms growth in NHS spending.
On present trends capital spending in the NHS will have been cut by pounds 600m, or 30 per cent, next year compared with its level two years ago, he said.
Mr Greenshields's warning to the NHS Trust Federations annual conference in Nottingham came despite Stephen Dorrell, the Secretary of State for Health, having told the conference on Tuesday that PFI was vital to maintaining and updating the NHS stock. Mr Greenshields, however, said: "If you talk to any of the major construction companies they will virtually spit if you say PFI." They have lost more than pounds 1bn of building because of delays that the initiative has introduced in capital spending decisions and they are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, in some cases pounds 500,000, on each scheme they have to work up in competition with other bidders.
No major project has yet gone ahead, however, despite talk of pounds 2bn in PFI schemes in the pipeline.
"If something doesn't happen soon, PFI could fall off the agenda," Mr Greenshields, who chairs a health manager's working party on the issue, warned. "Something has to happen to make the private sector stay in." The process has proved bureaucratic, costly to the private sector and the NHS and slow, he said.
Mr Greenshields also challenged Labour to be clear about its intentions, saying statements that Labour will not allow PFI in the NHS while supporting it for roads and rail, was making the private sector seek higher premiums to cover the risk, while NHS trusts were wondering if it was worth pushing ahead with schemes if there was going to be a change of government.
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