By Tash Shifrin
Trade union Unison has warned that taxpayers face a £217bn bill for Private Finance Initiative projects over the next 25 years, and renewed its call for the scheme to be axed.
The message was reinforced at the union’s annual conference in Brighton on June 16, when general secretary Dave Prentis told delegates there would be ‘no more blank cheques’ for the Labour Party and threatened to cut off more than £1m of funding.
Prentis signalled a sharp deterioration in relations between the public sector union and the government, saying Unison members were ‘tired of feeding the hand that bites them’. He called on the union’s Labour Link section to suspend payments worth more than £100,000 to constituency organisations.
Up to £1m – the sum the union would usually pump into a Labour general election campaign – is also at risk, after Prentis said the union should support only ‘prospective Labour candidates who are willing to stand up for our values of public service’. He spelt out Unison’s opposition to the increasing involvement of the private sector.
Unison’s Reclaiming the initiative report, launched at the conference, said the government’s continued support for the PFI had ‘become irrational’ in the light of the financial crisis.
‘Following the collapse in bank lending to PFI projects, ministers are now putting £2bn of taxpayers’ money into what are supposed, by definition, to be privately financed ventures,’ the report said.
‘Although the current crisis is purely financial, and nothing to do with the actual mechanism of PFI, it does highlight the danger of relying heavily on the private sector for key building programmes,’ it added.
The report cited Treasury figures showing that more than £217bn would have to come from the public purse between now and 2033/34 in unitary charge payments on £64bn of PFI projects. Repayments were expected to peak at £10.8bn in 2017/18, it said.
Unison called for planned PFI projects to be halted in favour of publicly funded ‘design and build’ contracts. This would remove the need for expensive, complicated and unreliable private financing, it argued.
It wants ‘soft services’ – such as cleaning and catering – removed from existing contracts. But the report stopped short of urging an immediate buyout of current PFI deals, calling instead for the government to ‘gradually bring existing contracts into public ownership’.
Trade union Unison has warned that taxpayers face a £217bn bill for Private Finance Initiative projects over the next 25 years, and renewed its call for the scheme to be axed.
The message was reinforced at the union’s annual conference in Brighton on June 16, when general secretary Dave Prentis told delegates there would be ‘no more blank cheques’ for the Labour Party and threatened to cut off more than £1m of funding.
Prentis signalled a sharp deterioration in relations between the public sector union and the government, saying Unison members were ‘tired of feeding the hand that bites them’. He called on the union’s Labour Link section to suspend payments worth more than £100,000 to constituency organisations.
Up to £1m – the sum the union would usually pump into a Labour general election campaign – is also at risk, after Prentis said the union should support only ‘prospective Labour candidates who are willing to stand up for our values of public service’. He spelt out Unison’s opposition to the increasing involvement of the private sector.
Unison’s Reclaiming the initiative report, launched at the conference, said the government’s continued support for the PFI had ‘become irrational’ in the light of the financial crisis.
‘Following the collapse in bank lending to PFI projects, ministers are now putting £2bn of taxpayers’ money into what are supposed, by definition, to be privately financed ventures,’ the report said.
‘Although the current crisis is purely financial, and nothing to do with the actual mechanism of PFI, it does highlight the danger of relying heavily on the private sector for key building programmes,’ it added.
The report cited Treasury figures showing that more than £217bn would have to come from the public purse between now and 2033/34 in unitary charge payments on £64bn of PFI projects. Repayments were expected to peak at £10.8bn in 2017/18, it said.
Unison called for planned PFI projects to be halted in favour of publicly funded ‘design and build’ contracts. This would remove the need for expensive, complicated and unreliable private financing, it argued.
It wants ‘soft services’ – such as cleaning and catering – removed from existing contracts. But the report stopped short of urging an immediate buyout of current PFI deals, calling instead for the government to ‘gradually bring existing contracts into public ownership’.
