Source: Telegraph

The infrastructure scheme is proving astonishingly profitable for equity owners who sell on their stakes - and pressure is growing for the state to claw back a share. Liam Halligan and Jonathan Russell report.

Soon after New Labour took office in 1997, Alan Milburn, the then health secretary, declared that when it came to new hospitals, "it's PFI or bust".

In other words, unless local health chiefs used the private finance initiative to procure new facilities, those facilities would not be built.

Ten years on, Milburn's warning seems to have worked. More than 700 PFI deals have happened under this Government - with ministers signing up the private sector to build, service and maintain not just state hospitals but schools, prisons, roads and defence equipment too.

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Posted by pichu at May 21, 2007 8:47 AM