British NHS hospital PFI schemes will pay private enterprise £60 billion over the next three decades, according to the Conservative Party.
The Tories, who said the NHS had been “saddled with debt” by PFI, calculated the figures from ministerial answers to Parliamentary questions about PFI schemes around the country.
They included costs of £5.3 billion at Barts and the London NHS Trust and £2.9 billion at Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals.
Andrew Lansley, the party’s health spokesman, said that £900 million was being slashed from the NHS budget for capital projects at the same time.
“The Government needs to come clean about why it has cut funding for investment in hospital buildings but saddled the NHS with £60 billion of debt to the private sector,” he added.
“Private Finance Initiative projects can provide much-needed extra money for hospital buildings, but there are too many unanswered questions about the way the Government has handled these deals.
“Most of the new PFI hospitals don’t comply with the Government’s own guidelines on ending mixed-sex wards in hospitals because they don’t have enough single rooms.”
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