Political

Do you remember how PFI was meant to work?

David Miliband, House of Commons, debate on PFI in the education sector, 2004:

The public-private partnerships enable the public sector to use private sector resources to deliver elements of services that the latter, through its skills and expertise, is best placed to provide through a structure in which the private sector puts its capital at risk so that it is paid only when it delivers.

That’s of course how PFI was always sold to us by Labour (and in its previous forms by the Conservatives before that*). And now that the private sector is struggling to deliver PFI schemes for schools, are those firms saying, “Oh, fair enough, it was always part of the deal that we took some risk in return for the opportunity to earn big profits?” or “Hey, give us more money! Please! Now!”? I think you can guess.

It does mean, however, that politicians need to be more imaginative in coming up with solutions to the problems PFI was meant to fix but didn’t.

* A note for younger readers: yes indeed, back in the past the Conservatives were in power.

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