Reacting to John McDonnell’s announcement that the Labour party will bring existing PFI contracts back in-house, and that the Labour party will “End the UK government’s financial and advisory support for similar projects overseas” Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said:
“We welcome the announcement by John McDonnell that Labour will not just reduce the rip-off costs of the Private Finance Initiative by bringing contracts in house, but also stop the shameless promotion of this broken model overseas. The Private Finance Initiative has been a costly failure in the UK, which is acknowledged across the political spectrum. Yet the UK government continues to use various means to promote similar schemes to other countries, including some of the most impoverished in the world. It is great news the Labour party would stop this exporting of these costly schemes. We hope the government will quickly follow suit.”
The Jubilee Debt Campaign released a new report this month exposing the contradiction between senior UK government ministers’ criticism of the cost of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospitals in the UK, whilst their departments are actively promoting such schemes to other countries.
In the report, titled ‘Double standards: How the UK promotes rip-off health PPPs abroad’, the Jubilee Debt Campaign show that Liam Fox, Jeremy Hunt, Priti Patel and Boris Johnson have all criticised the Private Finance Initiative in the UK, yet their departments are promoting similar schemes in many impoverished countries.
