minister Andy Burnham has rubberstamped six new hospital schemes totalling £1.5 billion, to be funded by the Private Finance Initiative, despite mounting evidence that the PFI system of funding is an all-round disaster for the NHS.
Burnham insisted that each of the projects, the largest of which is the £711m scheme for University Hospitals of Leicestershire was "value for
The next money" and "locally affordable" - but they hospitals have have said that about every previ- been drastically ous PFI hospital, cut back to and all of them are
reduce their dogged by huge and unresolved headline price financial prob- and annual lems, while many
"unitary charge" PFI hospitals are far too small to cope with local health needs.
We can already see evidence that the next generation of PFI hospitals have been drastically cut back to reduce their headline price and annual "unitary charge" before being approved: the controversial €1.2 billion Barts & London hospital project was slashed back by over zuro. elsewnere bea culs of up to 40% have been proposed to bring down the cost of the scheme in Wakefield, which has yet to get the goahead.
In Colchester a £160m PFI hospital scheme has been scrapped because the Trust could not be sure that it could attord the high rental costs of the new building in the light of New Labour's new financial system for Trusts and its drive to privatise a growing share of elective surgery.
University Hospital of North generation of PFI Staffordshire, one
of the first Trusts to face a government-appointed "turnaround" team to drive forward cuts to wipe out a £34m deficit, has seen its £420m new hospital proj•CCI slashed 35%, to £272m: but a pro-rata cut in the payments for the new hospital will see the Trust forking out at least £33m a year, index linked - 11 percent of the Trust's maximum likely income.
Tony Blair's private sector friends will be delighted as another gravy train sets off carrying another batch of guaranteed protits. UNISON members
in Newcastle staged an angry
protest at news
that top Trust
directors had
awarded themselves pay increases uh to imposing cuts o 224m - including bed closures and a UNISON
cut in patient
meals Ray Smith
UNISON
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