Private Finance Initiative and Public Private Partnerships: What future for public services?

A detailed analysis of PFI including 25 reasons to oppose PPP/PFI projects and drawing on extracts from Public Services or Corporate Welfare: Rethinking the Nation State in the Global Economy by Dexter Whitfield (Pluto Press, 2001)

37 pages, June 2001.

Section 1 Introduction

Section 2 The origins of PFI/PPP

Section 3 The basics of PFI/PPP

Section 4 The claimed rationale for PFI/PPP

Section 5 What Labour did for PFI/PPPs

Section 6 25 reasons to oppose PFI/PPP

  1. Reconfiguring services – PFI/PPP affects all staff and services

  2. PFI/PPPs are often more expensive than publicly financed projects

  3. Escalating project costs

  4. Whose value for money?

  5. PFI projects commit future governments to a stream of payments

  6. Affordability gap – cuts in other services

  7. PFI is subsidised by government

  8. High transaction costs

  9. Public sector comparator flawed

  10. Privatising the development process: selling land and assets

  11. Transforming the funding of capital expenditure

  12. Changing nature of risk

  13. Lack of democratic accountability

  14. Service failures

  15. Public sector lose control over assets and services

  16. Private sector dictating social and public needs

  17. Two tier workforce transforming the labour process

  18. Impact on in-house services

  19. Best Value

  20. Refinancing PFI/PPP projects

  21. New form of contractor organisation

  22. Loss of public interest

  23. Long procurement and negotiation process

  24. Shifting the balance between capital and the state

  25. A new age of corruption

Section 7 Alternatives to PFI/PPP

Section 8 Exporting PFI/PPP

Section 9 Impact of the World Trade Organisations General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)

Section 10 Public goods, private delivery

Section 11 Corporate welfare complex

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European Services Strategy Unit, Duagh, Camp, Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland.
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This document was created by Dexter Whitfield on 2008-03-28 14:25:26.
This document was last modified by Dexter Whitfield on 2016-10-10 19:56:02.
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