Private Finance Initiative and Public Private Partnerships- What Future for Public Services?
Includes extracts from Public Services or Corporate Welfare: Rethinking the Nation State in the Global Economy by Dexter Whitfield (Pluto Press, 2001)
Published June 2001, 37 pages.
Contents
Introduction.
The origins of PFI/PPPs.
The basics of PFI/PPP.
The claimed rationale for PFI/PPP
What Labour did for PFI/PPPs
25 reasons to oppose PFI/PPP
Reconfiguring services – PFI/PPP affects all staff and services
PFI/PPPs are often more expensive than publicly financed projects
Escalating project costs
Whose value for money?
PFI projects commit future governments to a stream of payments
Affordability gap – cuts in other services
PFI is subsidised by government
High transaction costs
Public sector comparator flawed
Privatising the development process: selling land and assets
Transforming the funding of capital expenditure
Changing nature of risk
Lack of democratic accountability
Service failures
Public sector lose control over assets and services
Private sector dictating social and public needs
Two tier workforce transforming the labour process
Impact on in-house services
Best Value
Refinancing PFI/PPP projects
New form of contractor organisation
Loss of public interest
Long procurement and negotiation process
Shifting the balance between capital and the state
A new age of corruption
Alternatives to PFI/PPP
Exporting PFI/PPP
Impact of the World Trade Organisations General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
Public goods, private delivery
Corporate Welfare Complex