Banks and developers will make £23 billion in profits and interest over the next 30 years by building NHS hospitals under the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI), health campaigners have calculated.
A report by the Keep Our NHS Public group accused the government of carrying out the ‘patchwork privatisation’ of the NHS.
Under the PFI, a development company builds a hospital and then gets ‘rent’ from the NHS for a set term.
The report says: ‘Unlike the Thatcher privatisations of the 1980s, the whole NHS is not being put up for auction.
‘Instead, it is being parcelled up into bite-sized pieces and handed over to private control bit by bit.
‘This is happening on such a scale and at such pace as to make it a unique phenomenon.’
Alex Nunns, of Keep Our NHS Public, said: ‘Unbeknown to the public, the NHS is paying astronomical sums of money to the private sector.
‘When the NHS is making cuts and closures across the country, it’s time to ask if this is the best use of public money.’
As recently as October, the government disclosed some of the figures involved in the NHS’s use of PFI schemes to finance new hospitals.
The figures, which emerged in a response to a parliamentary question, showed that the NHS would pay a total of £53 billion to the private firms involved.
That amount was the total cost, but did not distinguish how much was profits.
A Department of Health spokesman said in response to the new report that the annual payments made by NHS trusts to private sector ‘partners’ covered financing charges, repayment of capital, building maintenance and, in most cases, all the non-clinical support services like cleaning and catering.
The spokesman claimed the NHS was saving money through ‘robust contracting’.
But a previous report by trade union UNISON has revealed that millions of pounds are being made by PFI refinancing and PFI charges are putting NHS trusts deep into debt.
